An enterprise service bus - or ESB - is a standards-based connectivity layer used to integrate distributed systems across functional, enterprise, and/or geographic boundaries. An ESB provides a combination of service enablement, messaging transport, routing, and mediation to address a wide variety of enterprise integration challenges. 

Talend ESB Standard Edition supports a broad set of standard enterprise integration patterns (EIPs) making it an excellent solution regardless of topology or architecture.  Moreover, Talend ESB is open and standards-based to allow wide interoperability with existing and legacy infrastructure components. 

Talend Service Factory Community Edition is designed for developers that are looking for rich service enablement capability without the additional overhead of a full-fledged ESB. Powered by Apache CXF, Talend Service Factory supports both Web services and REST based service development giving developers the freedom to choose the method most suitable for their existing environment.

Talend Integration Factory Community Edition simplifies integration tasks and makes users more productive in their integration projects. Talend Integration Factory is based on the open source Apache Camel project and is built on a lightweight, component-based architecture that supports a variety of integration protocols, data formats and programming languages.  It comes “out-of-the-box" with pre-configured runtime packages ready for deployment in environments including OSGi, Apache Tomcat, JEE servers or standalone JVM.

Learn about Talend's application integration products:
Talend ESB, a versatile and flexible ESB that allows organizations to address any integration challenge - from simple departmental projects to complex, heterogeneous IT environments.
Talend Service Factory, an open, lightweight and flexible service enablement framework powered by Apache CXF.
Talend Integration Factory, a fully supported, production-ready mediation and routing engine powered by Apache Camel that uses Enterprise Integration Patterns to improve developer productivity.

The key benefits of an open source ESB include the following:

• Freedom and Transparency: Open source facilitates freedom and helps you avoid vendor “lock-in“ – removing the ties to proprietary commercial software vendors.  Open source also allows you to influence the design and development of the solution, therefore allowing you to have a profound and visible affect on the product roadmap.
• Innovation and Quality: With access to a global community of contributors and committers, open source follows a constant path of both innovation and quality.  The community is readily available to carry new requirements into a release, as well as thoroughly test builds to ensure that the highest quality levels are maintained.
• Reduced Costs: Whether you are measuring across project lifecycles: (e.g., development, testing, deployment, and production) or external spend with vendors for software license, professional services, or support, open source will reduce your overall project costs significantly.

ESB On demand webinars

Talend's on demand Webinars contain a wealth of information about application integration, SOA, ESBs, and open source solutions.  They provide a combination of high-level overview and detailed hands-on demonstration.   Available Webinars on demand are: Administration and Run-time Tests with the toolsuite for Talend ASF (formerly SOPERA ASF) Development of Services with the Talend ASF (formerly SOPERA Advanced Services Factory) - demonstrated with an example

More on demand webinars are available.

Resources available to help you

Talend's community web site, www.talendforge.org, provides a wealth of resources and applications to help the Talend community interact and make the best out of their ASF solutions:

		The Forum is the place to go for any question, problem or assistance request with Talend ESB, Talend Service Factory and Talend Integration Factory. You can also go to the blog where other information is available.
		The Bugtracker is the real-time bug tracking and feature request system, and also provides complete visibility on the development of the solutions.

Move to the next step and discover the resources available to help you deploy an open source ESB.

In order to make solutions available to organizations of all sizes and for all levels of expertise, Talend has developed a number of service programs, designed to facilitate the ramp-up of project teams and ensure the highest level of productivity.

		Learn the required skills to take full advantage of Talend's solutions, in a public or private training class
		Receive prompt, effective and high-quality support services for higher productivity, security and peace of mind
		Leverage a standard or customized expert consulting package that address a variety of situations in the project life cycle

Talend's extensive partner network, the Talend Alliance Program, is an integral part of the Talend ecosystem and helps organizations find technology and expertise to support their deployment of open source ESBs.

• Technology partners provide products and technology that are complementary to Talend's ESB products.
• Consulting partners provide consulting, development, expertise or training on technologies or subject matters that are related to or include ESBs.

You can check contact information for your local Talend office.