Azure Service Bus Communication protocols

With Service Bus in Azure you can leverage three protocols to send and receive messages:
•Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP)
•Service Bus Messaging Protocol (SBMP)
•HTTP

AMQP and SBMP protocols are more efficient than the HTTP protocol because with these protocols the connection to Service Bus maintain the connectivity as long as the messaging factory exists.

The default protocol for the Azure Service Bus is the SBMP and is proprietary. Moreover, the sb is a schema and not an actual protocol - under the hood it is HTTPS.

The Azure Service Bus supports AMQP 1.0, enabling you to build cross-platform, hybrid applications. Furthermore, AMQP 1.0 is a connection-oriented protocol that uses binary encoding for the protocol instructions and the business messages transferred over it.

With the Service Bus, you have the option to efficiently communicate cross platform with AMQP or SBMP when it comes to Microsoft-only platform. Hybrid integration using BizTalk Server Service Bus adapter (BizTalk 2010 or higher) leverage the SBMP. Furthermore, you can use both protocols for .NET implementations. An example is Service Bus .NET library from Sean Feldman.