I would like to thank everyone at Packt Publishing for giving me the opportunity to write this book. Special thanks to Sarah Cullington for guiding us through the initial work, Pallavi Iyengar and Chris Rodrigues for continuing her work, Vishal Bodwani for his enthusiasm and encouragement and all the technical reviewers.

I would also like to thank all my colleagues at Red Hat for providing a rich and fertile environment in which ideas are encouraged to flourish, without which this book would be rather brief. It is truly an inspiring place to work.

A big thank you must also go to my family and friends who, having heard about this project, encouraged me to go forward with enthusiasm.

Finally my biggest thanks are reserved for those who are most important to me, my wife and children. They have been patient and encouraging throughout this process, allowing me to work late through the night and on weekends in order to catch up with the schedule, all the while having to deal with one of the most disruptive events any family can undertake—emigration to a distant country. I began this process while planning to leave one country, finishing it while setting up a home in a second. I love you all very much.

I'd like to thank my sons Ben and Nate, my wife Sonia, and my parents for their support in writing this book.

I'd like to thank my wife Maria for her understanding and support during many late night writing and editing sessions, and Mary and Robert for their frequent (and extremely important!) interruptions for hockey, dancing, baseball, soccer, and softball as they kept what's truly important in life in perspective.

I'd also like to thank way too many current and former co-workers to mention for everything I learned from them, my co-authors Kevin, Tom, and Magesh, my mates' in Geordie Land and přátelé in Brno and the open source communities that make JBoss ESB and all the other JBoss projects possible. And finally, I'd like to thank Sarah, Chris, Vishal, Vanjeet, and everyone else at Packt for giving us the opportunity to write this book!

I would first like to thank Kevin Conner for introducing me to JBoss ESB. Without him I wouldn't have been part of this book. I would like to thank Len and Tom for those delightful days while we wrote this book.

Next I would like to thank Sarah Cullington from Packt for her initial review when we started this book. I would like to thank my parents, my wife Charu, my sons Lavesh and Shashwath for being so patient while they missed my time with them. Lastly to my little daughter Yashtika for showing her godly smile when the times were tough.