I agree with rwatson and, partially, with futura.

However, we managed to use ServiceBroker to replace a job that repeated every minute to check if new data are available... It took quite a while to get it up and running, especially since it involved cross-server-communication.

If you compare the effort required to transfer incoming data from a "transfer server" to a second server and start a procedure to process the data on the target server it's done much easier with a job running frequently than with ServiceBroker. Not to mention the effort to troubleshoot.

So, since there are alternatives that are easier to manage, ServiceBroker might be the second best solution for most of the tasks (assuming the downsides of the "job-solution" like being "pseudo-real-time", running most of the time just to figure that there are no data and the like will be acceptable...).

@futura: You can start external apps when using External Activator (at least that what I've read, e.g. at blogs.msdn.com . I guess it's worth a try...