Where is Middleware?

Middleware is all about integration. Middleware has existed in various forms for many years in systems such as the IBM Customer Information Control System (CICS), numerous message queuing systems such as IBM's MQ Series, the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA), Microsoft's Component Object Model (COM), Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE), and the latest rage, Web services. Virtually every form of application, programming language, operating system, and hardware has been a target of an integration effort involving these middleware systems or their cousins. Middleware is everywhere.