IWay's new middleware offering, however, brings the company in direct competition with Microsoft's BizTalk Server 2006, said McJannet.

Included in iWay's SOA Middleware stack are the iWay Service Manager, an enterprise service bus with workbench and Web services capabilities, iWay Service Monitor, and iWay Enterprise Index, which extends keyword search capability of Google Search Appliance to ERP systems, databases, messages, business processes, middleware and B2B interactions.

IWay Process Manager, a BPEL (business process execution language)-based business process management tool, is software that allows users to design automated workflows across a particular business process using process-driven business intelligence, Senor explained. The built-in intelligence also eliminates programmer errors when designing a workflow, he added.

By simplifying application integration, iWay aims to lower the skill-set requirements to operate an otherwise complex SOA, resulting in productivity improvement and lower maintenance, Senor said.

Business is demanding accountability and value from their IT investment, said Kuhbock. "Only an intelligent enterprise-wide integration strategy and infrastructure will be able to support business in 2006 and beyond."