While SharePoint delivers a lot of out of the box functionality, it is also a great platform on which to build the enterprise user presentation layer to connect users with relevant line of business information in context with the other less structured information.

Some organisations may have invested in an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) like BizTalk + Patterns & Practices ESB Guidance or other vendor solutions, but how often do you actually see these platforms deliver agility? They often get bogged down in change control, limited technical resources, politics etc. That is why point solutions keep popping up all over the place.

If you do need a quick solution to integrate LOB data into SharePoint then you might want to consider the BizTalk Adapter Pack (BAP) – a set of three adapters (SAP, Siebel and Oracle DB) based on the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) LOB Adapters SDK that Microsoft released about 6 months ago. The adapter pack provides WCF based connectivity to the LOBs and the primary intent is for use from within BizTalk but it can also be used directly from SharePoint so the portal architects can possibly bypass the ESB gatekeepers ;-).

Microsoft wants to work with organizations to validate their SharePoint LOB integration scenarios, please visit the following site and complete a short survey if you are interested in developing this sort of solution.

There is also a very good blog from the adapter team that you should check out. http://blogs.msdn.com/adapters/