Abbreviated as EMS, an enterprise messaging system is an enterprise-grade system that enables “program-to-program” messaging between applications and systems throughout an enterprise. Enterprise messaging is widely used today for integrating various disparate enterprise applications. It is a software interface that enables loosely coupled asynchronous data (messages) to be sent by one program and stored in a message queue until the receiving program is able to process it.
Its important to note that while the term messaging can be used to describe e-mail, fax, instant messages and other services where humans read and send the messages, in EMS terminology the word messaging is used to describe asynchronous messages that consists of requests, reports or events that are consumed by enterprise applications and not humans. These messages contain information that is needed to coordinate systems and track progress of the enterprise.
Enterprise messaging systems, which are language and platform-independent solutions, are also called messaging services, or more formally, messaging-oriented middleware (MOM).
