Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

A communication system between mutually interacting software applications in a service-oriented architecture (SOA). It represents a software architecture for distributed computing and is a special variant of the more general client-server model, wherein any application may behave as server or client. ESB promotes agility and flexibility regarding high-level protocol communication between applications. Its primary use is in enterprise application integration (EAI) of heterogeneous and complex service landscapes.