É um tanto estranho que uma campanha publicitária da IBM, divulgada na EXAME e afins, esteja "vendendo" Middleware. Se fosse há uns 5 anos eu até entenderia. Mas hoje? Porisso (e outros fatores que comento oportunamente) acho que a Bea vai conseguir um belo posicionamento com o lançamento do Free Flow.

Saca só um trechinho de um artigo do ZapThink, falando do tal 'middleware':

The bigger problem, however, is that companies now think of distributed computing entirely in terms of connecting systems. Rather than focusing on the creation of business logic that meets business needs, companies now create layers of middleware. Companies now have to deal with the problem of integrating their disparate middleware implementations throughout their enterprise – middleware for their middleware, if you will. They must now spend millions more to manage and integrate the middleware that they have glued in place so well that it is virtually impossible to change or remove.

It simply makes no sense for companies to spend money to get their middleware to work well with other middleware. Why should companies have layers upon layers of middleware, each dealing with a specific tightly-coupled integration problem? Using middleware to solve acute, localized integration issues is one thing, using it to solve chronic problems that relate to business agility and ongoing flexibility is another! Companies don’t need more or better middleware to make their systems more agile. Instead, they need to step back and think through how to build, run, and manage distributed computing infrastructures that are inherently flexible and agile. What they need is architecture, in particular, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA).