Sheet1

TheServerSide.com ESB dashboard (draft)

ESB Comparison 0 – 1 Unacceptable 4 – 5 Acceptable (fully meets requirement)
2 – 3 Potentially acceptable (partially meets requirement)

IBM Websphere ESB

Apache ServiceMix
BEA AquaLogic

Mule
Key: 1 = lowest, 5 = highest
Business driver assessment
Ease of integration flexibility with current and
planned applications 4 5 2 3
ESB business process control, change,
management, governance, and life-cycle
features 5 4 3 3
Completeness of the ESB product offering 5 5 2 5
ESB security features and functionality 4 4 3 2
ESB features protect legacy middleware
investments 3 5 2 3
ESB scalability, robustness, reliability,
clustering, and fail-over features 3 4 3 4

ESB process modeling with BPEL capabilities 3 3 2 4

Extensive range of ESB communications
connectors and transport options 5 5 2 5

ESB business process orchestration capabilities 5 4 3 5

ESB compliance with industry standards 5 5 5 4
Proven ability of ESB to sustain high volumes in
production 4 5 1 5
ESB mediation capabilities 5 5 2 5
ESB development environment flexibility 2 5 4 2
ESB integration with other vendor SOA
technologies 2 5 4 2
ESB impact on existing architecture and
infrastructure 3 5 3 2
Deployment Topology BEA Mule SM IBM
Client/Server 4 5 1 4
Enterprise Service Network (ESN) 5 5 2 5
ESB 5 5 3 5
Peer to Peer 5 5 0 3
Streaming 1 4 0 3
Remote deployment and management 3 4 0 3
Operating System Deployment Options BEA Mule SM IBM
Mac OSX 0 5 4 0
Red Hat Linux 5 5 5 5
Solaris SPARC/x86 5 5 4 5

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Suse Linux 5 5 5 5
Windows Server 5 5 4 4
Deployment Complexity BEA Mule SM IBM
Impact on existing infrastructure 1 5 3 1
J2EE Application Server Installation 5 5 3 3
Stand-alone (no app server) installation 2 5 3 2
Support Options BEA Mule SM IBM
24X7 Support Availability 5 5 5 5
Contract Support Availability 5 5 2 5
Custom Engineering Services 5 5 5 5
License and Support Costs BEA Mule SM IBM
License cost (Specify Method) Upfront OSS OSS Upfront
Annual Support Cost High Low High Low
Dependencies on other Product Components 2 5 2 2
Installed Customer Base BEA Mule SM IBM
Private Sector over 150 over 300 ~20 over 100
Public Sector over 100 over 100 ~10 over 100
Quality of Service, Monitoring & Lifecycle
Support BEA Mule SM IBM
Services SLA Support 5 3 2 4
Monitoring and Management 5 5 1 5
Integrated monitoring, tracing, and logging 5 5 2 5
Eclipse functionality 4 5 5 5
Service Lifecycle management including
development, reuse, integration, deployment,
management, and optimization 4 4 2 4
Message Types BEA Mule SM IBM
XML 5 5 5 5
Binary 3 5 1 3
Streaming 4 4 1 3
TECHNOLOGY COMPONENT EVALUATION
Java BEA Mule SM IBM
1.4 3 5 0 3
5 5 5 5 5
6 5 5 3 3
API BEA Mule SM IBM
REST 2 5 4 2
POJO Support (No API) 0 5 2 0
Proprietary 5 5 2 5
End to end event support BEA Mule SM IBM
Routing 5 5 3 3
Transport 5 5 2 2
Transformation 5 5 3 2

Service registry and metadata management BEA Mule SM IBM

UDDI V3 or greater 3 0 0 3
Application Server Support BEA Mule SM IBM
Apache Tomcat 2 5 4 2
Geronimo 1 4 4 2

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Jboss 1 5 4 2
Jetty 1 5 5 2
Jrun 1 4 4 2
Oracle 5 5 1 4
Resin 1 4 1 2
Web Sphere 1 5 1 5
WebLogic 5 5 1 1
Transport BEA Mule SM IBM
Supports synchronous, asynchronous and
request response events 5 5 2 5
Integration/Framework BEA Mule SM IBM
EJB 5 5 1 5
GigaSpaces 4 5 1 0
HiveMind 1 5 1 1
JavaSpaces 3 5 1 1
JBI 3 4 5 4
JCA 0 5 5 4
JNDI 0 5 0 1
JOTM 0 5 0 1
JTA 5 5 5 5
PicoContainer 0 5 0 0
Plexus 0 5 0 0
Spring 5 5 3 3
Development Tools BEA Mule SM IBM

Component development environment for

writing intelligent adapters in multiple languages 5 4 3 5
Developers insulated from messaging layer 5 5 5 5
Documented Service API for developing new
services 5 5 4 5
JMS compliant messaging API 5 5 5 5
Open platform for 3rd party tools, IDEs, etc. 0 5 5 0
Standards based OS agnostic 3 5 5 2
Supports full XML standard 5 5 3 5
Web Services BEA Mule SM IBM
Axis 2 5 5 2
REST 3 5 1 3
SOAP 5 5 5 5
WebMethods Glue 1 5 3 0
Xfire 4 5 5 2
Security BEA Mule SM IBM
ACEGI 5 5 0 0
JAAS 5 5 5 5
PGP 3 5 2 3
Other Technology Support BEA Mule SM IBM
BPEL 5 3 1 5
jBPM 0 4 0 0
JSR -223 (Scripting) 5 5 5 5
OGNL Filters 0 5 0 0

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Quartz (scheduling) 0 5 5 0

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e (fully meets requirement)

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