企业服务总线（Enterprise Service Bus，ESB）的概念是从面向服务体系架构(Service Oriented Architecture， SOA)发展而来的。SOA描述了一种IT基础设施的应用集成模型；其中的软构件集是以一种定义清晰的层次化结构相互耦合。一个ESB是一个预先组装的SOA实现，它包含了实现SOA分层目标所必需的基础功能部件。

在企业计算领域，企业服务总线是指由中间件基础设施产品技术实现的、 通过事件驱动和基于XML消息引擎，为更复杂的面向服务的架构提供的软件架构的构造物。企业服务总线通常在企业消息系统上提供一个抽象层，使得集成架构师能够不用编码而是利用消息的价值完成集成工作。

An enterprise service bus (ESB) is a software architecture model used for designing and implementing communication between mutually interacting software applications in a service-oriented architecture (SOA). As a software architectural model for distributed computing, it is a specialty variant of the more general client server model and promotes agility and flexibility with regard to communication between applications. Its primary use is in enterprise application integration (EAI) of heterogeneous and complex landscapes.