Lead Analyst: Chris Alliegro [bio]
Posted: Sep. 13, 2004

BizTalk Server 2004, the latest version of Microsoft's platform for business process modeling and application integration, became generally available in Apr. 2004 and offers significant changes to the product’s underlying architecture, improved support for Web services, a new integrated development environment based on Visual Studio .NET, and a host of new tools and capabilities for business and IT workers. These changes will yield faster solutions, enable new scenarios (modeling human-oriented business processes, such as manager review and approval of employee expense reports, for instance), and provide new opportunities for systems integrators and ISVs, all of which will serve to drive BizTalk adoption. This, in turn, could further Microsoft’s push to establish Web services as the dominant industry standard for Web-based application and business interoperability, and .NET as the preferred development platform for creating Web services. However, BizTalk 2002 applications will need to be rewritten to run on the new platform and much of BizTalk Server 2004 is effectively version 1.0. Consequently, early adopters could see a degree of instability in the product and changes to services and interfaces in subsequent releases.

This report describes the major changes made in BizTalk with the release of BizTalk Server 2004, including the product’s new architecture and updated support for XML Web services, a new Visual Studio .NET development environment, and new tools and programming interfaces designed to help companies automate components of human-oriented workflow. Finally, the report identifies important limitations and potential problems in BizTalk Server 2004, and suggests future directions for the product. An appendix outlines the licensing requirements and base pricing for the product.