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The Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) often plays an important role in Software as a Service (SaaS) integration and thus a role any cloud computing environment. But the interplay of cloud computing and the ESB can be difficult to navigate. The purpose of this page is to help you understand the role of the enterprise service bus in cloud computing.

Contents

What is an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)?
How does an ESB integrate SaaS applications? (Coming soon)
Is there such a thing as a cloud ESB? (Coming soon)

What is an ESB?

An enterprise service bus (ESB) is a type of middleware that helps to integrate disparate applications—including those written in different languages from one another—without having to code each integration independently.

How does an ESB work?

The ESB works by sorting, routing, and translating communication between applications. To do this, the ESB uses popular techniques, including using Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and Representational State Transfer (REST) to translate data and requests into XML messages readable by a wide variety of other applications.

How does the ESB differ from EAI?

The ESB differs from enterprise enterprise application integration (EAI) architecture in that it does not rely on a centralized messaging system. In EAI, also known as hub and spoke integration, all messages pass through the same system and are then sorted. In an ESB there is no center.

More definitions of the ESB

What is an ESB and do you really need one? [Computer World]
Just what is an ESB, anyway? [Developer World]
What is an ESB? [JBoss]
What is an ESB and what is it good for? [Stack Overflow]
What is an ESB? [MSDN]
What is Enterprise Service Bus? [Oracle]
What is enterprise service bus? [Whatis.com]
ESB architecture and lifecycle definition [Progress]