BizTalk Server Previews B2B Commerce Strategy

Developers can now download a technical preview of BizTalk Server 2000. BizTalk Server is an application integration server, a programmable “hub” that enables existing programs to exchange business data such as purchase orders and invoices. It helps companies use legacy applications in business-to-business (B2B) commerce systems, which Gartner predicts will handle US$400 billion worth of transactions in 2000. The preview shows only some features of the product, which will eventually grow into a complete development environment for orchestrating business-to-business transactions. BizTalk Server faces tough competition; it’s positioned as a relatively simple, low-cost alternative that works well with key applications from Microsoft and its partners.

What BizTalk Server Does

Microsoft applies the term “BizTalk” to a server product, to a developer toolkit, and to its efforts to promote XML e-commerce in general (see “BizTalk Server and the BizTalk Framework”). BizTalk Server is the product, a spin-off of Site Server 3.0 Commerce Edition (see “BizTalk Server’s Place in Microsoft’s E-Commerce Lineup”). At its most basic, it’s an “application message switch” that a developer can program to decode, route, convert, and encode business documents sent between particular applications. For example, a healthcare insurer might use BizTalk Server to accept bills over the Web from providers (doctors, hospitals, and laboratories). In a typical scenario: