Apache ActiveMQ Artemis is a high performance, flexible, and lightweight message broker that supports clustering, high availability, and multi-protocol communication. It provides asynchronous messaging, decoupling of producers and consumers, and routing capabilities through the broker. The broker can be run in clustered and replicated configurations for scalability and reliability. It supports common protocols like AMQP, OpenWire, MQTT, STOMP, and HTTP for communication. Getting started involves creating a broker instance, configuring it, running the broker, and running producer and consumer clients to send and receive messages.