Candidate architectures

There are three ways that we decided to tackle this problem. Each possible solution brings with it some benefits and risks.

Candidate architecture #1 Azure Platform AppFabric Service Bus

Although going with a Windows Azure solution may be a bit aggressive for a more traditional IT shop, there are strategic benefits to seriously considering a publish/subscribe solution hosted in the cloud.

Solution design aspects

While not dealing with an enormous load, the solution does require us to deal with a varied usage profile and bursts of changes. A cloud-based infrastructure is an asset when we have inconsistent load and wish to design a solution that scales up or down based on our needs. Likewise, our clients need to pay only for their data usage (in the Azure Platform AppFabric case, we pay per connection and for the data transfer per GB) instead of setting up hardware sized for the peaks, but idle during the valleys.

One of the unique aspects of the Azure Platform AppFabric...