Sun Microsystems and the Project Open Enterprise Service Bus (Open ESB) community have announced the next preview release of Open ESB, the standards-based next generation integration platform developed under open community process.

The latest release, Open ESB 2.0 Preview, allows developers to integrate Web services and enterprise applications as loosely coupled composite applications, thereby making large-scale implementation of service-oriented architecture (SOA) principles manageable in a heterogeneous world.

Open ESB includes a standards-compliant Java Business Integration (JBI) runtime and a variety of components and technologies designed to increase business agility and reduce overall integration costs.

Many of the features developed in Project Open ESB will reportedly be made available in future versions of Sun's Java Composite Application Platform Suite (Java CAPS), the company's commercially supported product offering for customers building integration and composite application solutions.

"The availability of Open ESB 2.0 Preview represents the commitment of Sun and the thriving Open ESB community to developing openness and greater interoperability in an area of the integration stack where it has been lacking," said Jim McHugh, vice president of software infrastructure, Sun Microsystems.

"Software integration challenges are becoming increasingly complex due to evolving market conditions and the rise in mergers and acquisitions, creating immense challenges for CIOs looking to leverage existing investments and integrate disperse systems.

“Open ESB offers their developers the choice and flexibility needed to embark on SOA initiatives based on their unique circumstances by leveraging open source technologies and integrating best of breed components from ISVs."

Open ESB includes new features and tools to help enable the development and deployment of composite applications while leveraging existing applications and systems. Specifically, the open integration platform offers:

• Increased interoperability with third-party components and platform expansion opportunities that help enable developers to create additional plug-in components to fit specific tasks
• Greater integration with other open source software offerings, including Sun-led projects such as GlassFish, which offers an integrated runtime for Open ESB, and NetBeans , which provides developers with a single design tool to build, deploy and test an end-to-end composite application
• A viable alternative to proprietary ESB platforms that, through its transparent product development process, helps prevent vendor lock-in issues for developers and helps enable independent software vendors (ISVs) to extend established open platforms with customized offerings to meet specific customer needs