Application Integration and E-Commerce Overview

BizTalk Server versions are slated to appear roughly every two years. The next version will be named BizTalk Server 2009 (formerly named BizTalk Server 2006 R3) and will deliver compatibility with Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, and SQL Server 2008, among other improvements. The release to follow (called BizTalk Server 7 here) will probably appear in 2011. Both releases will probably incorporate electronic data interchange and business-to-business trading partner management technology that Microsoft acquired from Covast in July 2008.

Both BizTalk Server 2009 and BizTalk Server 7 will be built on the current BizTalk Server messaging and workflow (Orchestration) components and their tools. This contrasts with the plan as of Oct. 2007, which called for BizTalk Server to be rebuilt on new tools under development in a project code-named Oslo. The Oslo project continues, but future versions of BizTalk Server will not require technologies developed by the project. The upshot: no radical redesign of BizTalk Server is planned, which means existing solutions and skills will transfer more readily to future versions.