• Illustration: BizTalk Process Flow
• Illustration: Application Integration Scaling
• Chart: BizTalk Server Versions

BizTalk Server 2004, the successor to BizTalk Server 2002, 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 (VS.NET), and a host of new tools and capabilities for business and IT workers. These changes could drive BizTalk Server adoption and in turn further Microsoft’s push to establish the .NET platform as the preferred tool for Web services development. Customers will also benefit from the improved product: relative to previous versions, BizTalk 2004 will yield faster BizTalk applications, easier solutions development, and new integration scenarios, such as human-oriented workflow applications. In addition, opportunities abound for partners. For example, broad adoption of the product will fuel demand for interfaces that allow BizTalk to communicate with external applications, and many businesses will require the assistance of integrators and ISVs to build and deploy complex BizTalk Server solutions.

However, these benefits come with a cost—BizTalk 2002 applications will need to be rewritten to run on the new platform. Furthermore, many of BizTalk’s new components are effectively version 1.0. Consequently, early adopters could see a degree of instability in BizTalk 2004 and changes to services and interfaces in subsequent releases.

BizTalk Server Simplifies Integration

BizTalk’s primary objective has not changed from previous versions: it aids information exchange among systems with incompatible data formats and communication protocols. The product typically is used in one of two scenarios:

• Intracompany enterprise application integration (EAI), such as connecting a company’s warehouse and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems
• Automation of business-to-business (B2B) processes, such as the exchange of purchase orders and invoices among trading partners.

(To see how BizTalk helps in both scenarios, see the illustration "BizTalk Process Flow".)

EAI becomes increasingly important as the number of disparate systems containing related, critical business data grows. This is a situation many mid-size and large companies find themselves in today following a surge of proprietary business system purchases over the past two decades. By reducing or eliminating manual transfer and reentry of data between disparate systems, businesses can reduce operating costs and data error and inconsistency. Similarly, businesses that rely on many trading partners (for example, a manufacturer that sources parts from hundreds or thousands of suppliers) stand to gain similar efficiencies through automation of B2B processes such as purchase order processing, invoicing, payment, and fulfillment.

BizTalk Server supports a "hub-and-spoke" architecture for EAI and B2B integration that can substantially reduce the number of integration points required. This in turn can reduce the amount of engineering required to create and maintain integration solutions. (The benefits of hub-and-spoke architecture are described further in the illustration "Application Integration Scaling".) This becomes particularly important for large companies integrating many systems or intercompany business networks that involve transactions among large numbers of trading partners.

The core engine in BizTalk contains two main components that allow it to act as a general application integration hub. The first, a messaging component, serves two primary functions. First, it allows BizTalk to send data to, and receive them from, various external systems; data are exchanged in the form of messages, which typically are business documents such as purchase orders. Second, it processes messages before they are sent and after they are received. This processing includes, for example, translating messages into and from BizTalk’s native language (XML) and validating their structure in the process.

The second component, called the "orchestration" component, executes the business process logic (encapsulated in "orchestrations," in BizTalk parlance) associated with a message or group of messages. For example, an orchestration could evaluate the logical conditions that apply to approval of a purchase order received by BizTalk’s messaging component, such as whether the dollar amount of the purchase order exceeded the spending authority of its originator. Based on that evaluation, the orchestration could trigger the messaging component to send the purchase order to a supplier or a rejection notice to the originator of the purchase order.

The BizTalk engine, made up of the messaging and orchestration components, is a runtime platform that manages and runs BizTalk "applications" in real time. BizTalk applications are comprised of the specific message definitions, message exchanges and processing instructions, and business logic code (or orchestrations) that define an end-to-end business process. BizTalk provides an array of graphical tools and logical building blocks that business analysts (business users familiar with an organization’s processes) and BizTalk application developers use to specify and create BizTalk applications. .

BizTalk also offers support for Web services. With its standards-based approach to messaging and data exchange (Web services communicate with one another by exchanging XML messages), Web services have quickly gained popularity with businesses looking to integrate applications and exchange information with other businesses over the Internet. BizTalk support for Web services can take a variety of forms; for example, BizTalk can route messages between proprietary applications (with proprietary interfaces and data formats) and applications that expose Web services interfaces. In addition, BizTalk developers can easily expose orchestrations as Web services, which offers an effective means of creating Web services interfaces for business processes or proprietary applications that don’t natively provide them.

In addition to the core BizTalk Server product, small industries have grown around communication components (called "adapters") that allow BizTalk to exchange messages with other applications, and prepackaged BizTalk solutions that address specific business problems (processing medical data, for example). Competitors to BizTalk Server include BEA WebLogic Integration, IBM WebSphere Business Integration Server, and products from TIBCO, Vitria, and webMethods, among others.

BizTalk 2004 a Major Redesign

Compared with earlier versions of the product, BizTalk 2004 delivers a faster and more scalable core engine, an improved development environment based on Visual Studio, improved support for Web services, and important new features and tools for business and IT workers. (For an overview of BizTalk versions, see the chart "BizTalk Server Versions".)

Among other improvements, BizTalk 2004 offers the following significant changes from previous versions of the product:

Improved performance and scalability. Performance and scalability gains in BizTalk’s messaging and orchestration components will increase message throughput, support processing of large messages, and yield more stable and faster running orchestrations. These changes will allow BizTalk 2004 to support scenarios—such as trading networks with large transaction volumes—that might have choked earlier versions of the product. In addition, BizTalk 2004 is a more cost-effective product than its predecessors—the faster messaging and orchestration components effectively reduce BizTalk’s cost per transaction.

Support for human-oriented workflow. New services and programming interfaces—called Human Workflow Services (HWS)—in BizTalk 2004 allow developers to model business processes that require human judgment and input, such as the review and approval of business proposals. Although significant developer skill is required, companies could gain efficiencies by using HWS to automate such human-oriented processes, many aspects of which are well-defined, predictable, and repetitive.

Better tools and environment for developers. A new development environment hosted in VS.NET offers capabilities such as broad programming language support, improved organization of projects, and source control. Integration of BizTalk’s development tools with the popular VS.NET development environment should improve the efficiency of experienced developers and shorten the learning curve for developers new to BizTalk Server.

Monitoring for business users. BizTalk 2004 supplies a business monitoring system, called Business Activity Monitoring (BAM), which collects, aggregates, and filters key business information from running BizTalk solutions. BAM can help organizations efficiently track and thus respond to key business events as they occur. It provides real-time views of business information without exposing the complexities of the physical BizTalk Server implementation.

Impact of the Changes

BizTalk 2004 could prove a significant release for customers, partners, and Microsoft itself.

For businesses that skipped BizTalk 2002 or earlier versions, the new release may warrant a second look. For example, BizTalk 2004’s superior performance could relieve bottlenecks in applications built on earlier versions—those applications would have to be rewritten, however—and developers can create applications faster in the new development environment. In addition, features such as HWS enable new integration scenarios.

As interest in and adoption of the product grows, so will opportunities for Microsoft partners. BizTalk Server is by nature a complex product that addresses relatively complex and arcane business problems. Thus, BizTalk solutions inevitably involve customization and proprietary code development. Deployment is also complex and often requires sophisticated software and hardware integration skills.

From Microsoft’s standpoint, BizTalk 2004 addresses many problems that depressed adoption of earlier versions. Aside from the obvious revenue implications, increased sales of BizTalk Server will help Microsoft further promote Web services and the .NET developer platform.

Challenges for Customers, Partners

Despite functional and architectural changes that will benefit developers, business workers, and IT staff, BizTalk 2004 is not without catches for customers and partners. Some important considerations include the following:

BizTalk 2004 is not backward-compatible. Many BizTalk 2002 items, such as orchestrations, are not compatible with BizTalk 2004. Most customer and partner applications built on BizTalk Server 2002 will need to be migrated or rewritten to run on the new platform.

Steep learning curve ahead. BizTalk 2004 introduces new product concepts, a new integrated development environment, and a host of other new developer and business user tools. Consequently, customers and partners (both familiar and unfamiliar with previous BizTalk versions) will face a steep learning curve, which could impact development and deployment schedules for new BizTalk solutions.

Documentation incomplete. BizTalk 2004 shipped with incomplete product documentation. Although the company released updates in Apr. and July 2004, product documentation is still a work in progress.

Version 1.0 woes. Many major components of BizTalk 2004 are effectively version 1.0, which, coupled with the redo of the product’s architecture, could cause some instability in new features. In addition, because the future direction of some of BizTalk’s underlying technologies are in flux, partners could see changes to the services and programming interfaces they rely on to create value-added products and applications.

Road ahead unclear. Beyond plans for an incremental BizTalk 2004 update, scheduled for late 2005 or early 2006, Microsoft has not divulged details about future BizTalk Server versions. As the company refines its strategy for subsequent versions of the product, it will have to reach significant decisions about how BizTalk Server squares with complementary technologies, such as SharePoint Portal Server (SPS) and Commerce Server (CS).

Internal competition. Microsoft has not yet rationalized BizTalk Server with other planned technologies that may overlap with it, such as the "Indigo" messaging component under development for Windows and the SQL Service Broker (SSB) messaging component planned for SQL Server 2005. Lack of clear direction on how these pieces fit could trigger concern among customers about the forward compatibility of applications built on BizTalk 2004 and reduce investment in BizTalk Server by partners and Microsoft's own groups as they devote more attention to other technologies.

What’s Ahead

This report is geared to IT professionals and developers who want to orient themselves on the major additions and enhancements found in BizTalk 2004 and the potential risks and challenges related to deployment and use of the product. It should also provide readers unfamiliar with BizTalk an overview of the product, the business problems it is designed to address, and how it addresses those problems. Finally, an appendix provides a guideline to BizTalk 2004 pricing and editions. The report includes material previously published in Update and contains the following major sections:

BizTalk Server Engine Reworked describes the major enhancements to BizTalk Server’s engine, including changes to the product’s messaging and orchestration components, the new business rule system, and updates in BizTalk’s support for Web services.

Human Workflow in BizTalk Server 2004 describes the new services and programming interfaces in BizTalk 2004 designed to help companies streamline human-dependent business processes (referred to as workflow) are described in this section.

New Tools for BizTalk Development outlines BizTalk Server’s new VS.NET development environment and includes an overview of the other stand-alone tools required to build BizTalk solutions.

BizTalk Server 2004 Challenges. This section highlights challenges associated with the use of BizTalk 2004.

Future Developments. Although Microsoft has not yet released a roadmap detailing the future of BizTalk Server, this section suggests some likely short- and long-term directions for the product.

Resources contains links and pointers to additional information about BizTalk Server.

Appendix: BizTalk Server Pricing and Packaging describes product licensing.