There are a number of features which are commonly found in various ESB solutions. Let's have a quick look at them, as they can be helpful to understand its offerings, technical capabilities, and to compare and evaluate it.

The following is an unordered and non-exhaustive list, but contains the elements that can be considered essential for an ESB solution:

• Location transparency (producer and consumers are unaware of the endpoints)
• Messaging
• VETRO
  • Validation (format and data validation)
  • Enrichment (addition of attributes)
  • Transformation (conversion from one format to another, for example, one XML schema to another using XSLT)
  • Routing (for example, message dispatching based on filters)
• Process and message monitoring
• Message security
• Protocol conversion (for example, HTTP to JMS)
• Monitoring, Administration, and Tracking

Some of the market-leading ESB solutions include IBM's WebSphere ESB, Oracle's Service Bus, and the TIBCO BusinessWorks ESB.