If you add nc between the pipes you've implemented an ESB :)
But shh, don't tell anyone how easy it is, if everyone figures out just how easy and scalable shell scripts are it will ruin the magic we bring to over-engineered enterprise projects.
If any here think fleitz is joking, please pick up a used copy of Manis, Schaffer, and Jorgensen's "Unix Relational Database Management". The authors create a relational database with little more than awk, cat, grep, od, sed, spell, tail and a bit of bourne-shell glue. After covering the basics of tables and relational theory, the authors create a small-business accounting system. The database became a commercial product (/rdb) and is still sold and used today (allegedly in hospitals).
As a very superficial example of this, pianobar is a fantastic terminal-based Pandora client that will happily read input from a FIFO. I had bound keys to issue various commands through the FIFO, on both my laptop and my desktop. Then I found my hands on my laptop keyboard when my music was playing from my desktop (or vice-versa). Simple application of netcat meant my commands could be typed at either keyboard.
But shh, don't tell anyone how easy it is, if everyone figures out just how easy and scalable shell scripts are it will ruin the magic we bring to over-engineered enterprise projects.