Before the Belgian Government implemented this new system, student records were unconnected and stored in different locations and file formats, which required the difficult task of co-ordinating approximately 8,000 different client applications.

Lilian Duchêne, SOA technical project manager for the overall system, ETNIC, said Iona's ESB gives the critical integration that the project needs to ensure the technology would be tough enough to handle both the volume of applications and the multiple applications involved in a centralised student-registration system.

"FUSE ESB provided the high levels of performance, reliability, and flexibility required for a project of this scale, and with the expertise of Iona's services and support organisation, we quickly concluded that this professional open source model would deliver results across the project on both a technical and business level", she said.

Other Iona customers include Dublin City Council, global financial services company Credit Suisse, and the Italian postal service, as well as investment firm and New York Stock Exchange member Raymond James.