Difference Between ESB and EAI

Question

In most of articles I have seen that the major difference between ESB and EAI is "Single Point Failure in EAI".

My Question here is :

In EAI if Hub fails are we saying that this is single point of failure. In ESB also if Bus fails we can say single point failure. Is this right? If not please briefly explain about this.

Answer 1

The major difference between ESB and EAI is not Single-Point-Of-Failure.

Having said that, if the ESB Bus fails then, yes, it is a point of failure. Ultimately these are just applications in your infrastructure and whether they are a single point of failure or not is dependent on their deployment (eg. clustering) and not on the underlying conceptual integration pattern.

Personally I would classify ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) as a type of EAI (Enterprise Application Integration). Many companies trying to sell you a product instead of a concept would argue differently.

ESB is just the new pattern for EAI instead of Hub-Spoke. I wouldn't get too caught up in the differences. When you dig into it they are few and far between.