IT Middleware Management

A variety of technologies are currently used to support program-to-program communication, such as object request brokers, message-oriented middleware, remote procedure calls and point-to-point web services. Newer technologies are emerging all the time, for example, Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), which enables programs, systems, and services to communicate with each other regardless of the architecture and origin of the applications. This is especially being used in the context of deploying Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs)

Middleware Management can be performed as part of an Application Management can be performed as part of an Application Management function (where it is dedicated to a specific application) or as part of a Technical Management function (where it is viewed as an extension to the Operating System of a specific platform).

The functionality provided by Middleware includes:

• Providing transfer mechanisms for data from various applications or data sources
• Sending work to another application or procedure for processing
• Transmitting data or information to other systems such as sourcing data for publication on websites
• Releasing updated software modules across distributed environments
• Collation and distributed of systems messages and instructions, for example, Events or operational scripts that need to be run on remote devices
• Multicast setup with networks. Multicast is the delivery of information to a group of destinations simultaneously using the most efficient delivery route
• Managing queue sizes.

Middleware Management is the set of activities that are used to manage middleware. These include:

• Working as part of Service Design and Transition to ensure that the appropriate middleware solutions are chosen and that they can perform optimally when they are deployed.
• Ensuring the correct operation of middleware solutions are chosen and that they can perform optimally when they are deployed.
• Detecting and resolving incidents related to middleware
• Maintaining and updating middleware, including licensing and installing new versions
• Defining and maintaining information about how applications are linked through middleware. This should be part of the CMS