title: Differences between API development platform e.g APIGEE and ESB
body: <p>Me and my team will be working on APIGEE which is an API development platform to expose some services in our application. I am going through their documentation and also trying to understand the need of APIGEE or any other API development platform like Mashery. One very good article on the need of API proxy as been very well explained in the given link, <a href="http://apievangelist.com/2011/06/11/the-battle-for-your-api-proxy/">http://apievangelist.com/2011/06/11/the-battle-for-your-api-proxy/</a></p>
  
  <p>One question that i am confused about is <strong>What is the difference between APIGEE and any ESB like ALSB or Mule</strong>. We know Apigee too supports message transformation via policies and protocols like http/https/soap.</p>
  
  <p>Can anyone please tell me the differences between the two? Does Esb support more protocols like SMTP/JMS etc.</p>
  
  <p>Any information is most welcome   </p>