The typical organisation is now extremely complex, with dozens of different applications, databases, and processes all trying to interoperate at once. Although the ideal scenario would be that all these different pieces would come together and act as a single, well-oiled machine, in reality the picture is very different - the pieces of the puzzle are more likely to interfere with each other, causing system failures and crashes, than they are to mesh together. This is a serious business problem, and various approaches have tried to solve it - some of the most recent involve the use of advanced technologies and business models, such as Service-Oriented Architectures and the Enterprise Service Bus.