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The enterprise service bus addresses the disadvantages of existing solutions by creating a standard infrastructure for integration. Point-to-point solutions, where each of n components requires n-1 interfaces for full communication, are replaced by a bus solution where each component requires a single interface to the bus for global communication. In the past, if application A wanted to talk to applications B, C, and D, three interfaces were required.

An ESB is an open standards based, distributed, and message-based. It provides routing, business process orchestration, reliability and security.
The ESB provides pluggable services. Because of the standard nature of the bus these pluggable services can be provided by third parties and still interoperate reliably with the bus.

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