A customer’s enterprise architect has identified requirements around caching, queuing, error handling, alerts, retries, event...

When an enterprise architect identifies complex infrastructure needs such as caching, queuing, and sophisticated event routing, it signals that a point-to-point integration architecture is insufficient. In such cases, the Integration Architect should recommend a Middleware-mediated architecture.

Middleware tools, such as an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) or an iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service), are specifically designed to fulfill these complex "Quality of Service" (QoS) requirements. In a publish/subscribe scenario, the middleware acts as the central orchestrator. It can receive a single "Fire and Forget" event from a publisher (like Salesforce) and then manage the technical complexities of routing that message to multiple active subscribers.

Middleware handles infrastructure-level tasks such as message queuing for offline systems, automatic retries with exponential backoff, and error handling with alerts—capabilities that are either unavailable or difficult to scale within Salesforce natively. Performing message transformation and protocol translation (e.g., SOAP to REST) within the middleware layer also protects Salesforce's Apex CPU limits. By leveraging middleware for these concerns, the architect ensures that Salesforce remains a performant engagement layer while the middleware provides the robust technical backbone for a resilient enterprise landscape.