An Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is an architectural pattern and a key enabler
in implementing the infrastructure for a service-oriented architecture (SOA).
Real-world experience has demonstrated that an ESB is only one of many
components required to build a comprehensive service-oriented infrastructure
(SOI). The term "ESB" has various interpretations in the market, which have
evolved over time; however, the basic challenge it addresses is the same.
Namely, the increasing adoption of SOA and the proliferation of Web services
have revealed an ever growing need to provide a managed layer between services
and their consumers. There must be support for interaction between heterogeneous
services and interfaces that might be mismatched, or that might change over
time.
Get Started with ESB
Download
the BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.1
Download
BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.1 documentation