BizTalk Server Team Blog

BizTalk Server Strong Roadmap and Innovations Preview presented at PDC

Tuesday 11/17/09 was a very exciting day for the BizTalk Server product team as well as for BizTalk developers attending the PDC 2009 conference in LA.

We have announced the release of BizTalk Server 2009 R2 in 2010 and we have laid out the roadmap for BizTalk Server future. (You can watch the PDC session here.)

The roadmap includes details around the following future releases:

• BizTalk Server 2006 R2 SP1 – scheduled for 2010 with immediate availability of the Beta release
• BizTalk Server 2009 R2
• BizTalk Server vNext

Here are the highlights of each version:

BizTalk Server 2009 R2:

Latest Application Platform Support for:

• Visual Studio 2010
• SQL Server 2008 R2
• Windows Server 2008 R2

BizTalk Server 2009 R2 will also provide new tools to increase the productivity of developers and IT professionals in particularly but not exclusively for B2B scenarios here are some examples:

Business to Business Scenarios

• Enhanced designer tool: the BizTalk map design tool will be dramatically enhanced to include make the creation and maintenance of maps easier and faster, especially of complex document transformation maps which are common in B2B scenarios.
• FPTS adapter: a secure and standards-based adapter that allows exchanging documents between trading partners using the FTP protocol.

Productivity Enhancements

• Performance tuning dashboard: a single dashboard allowing a BizTalk administrator to apply and manage a set of performance settings. This dashboard would enable easy tuning for performance of a BizTalk Server infrastructure.
• Improved support for event processing: the BizTalk RFID platform will include more built-in components to handle event filtering and delivery from event sources such as RFID and sensor devices. The easier assembly of pre-built components will reduce the time it takes to implement event handling solutions.
• Management automation options with PowerShell: new PowerShell scripts to programmatically control BizTalk management tasks would allow administrators to manage BizTalk Server more efficiently.
• New System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) Pack: a new object model in this pack that better reflects BizTalk artifacts would provide administrators with an enhanced visibility and monitoring capabilities of the BizTalk infrastructure availability and health.

At PDC we have demonstrated an early prototype of the new BizTalk Mapper hosted in Visual Studio 2010 (beta) .

BizTalk Server vNext (beyond 2009 R2)

This release will focus on the following main themes:

• Deep Microsoft Application Platform Alignment
  Leveraging innovations in the platform including in .NET and in the Windows Server AppFabric to further enhance BizTalk Server’s enterprise-readiness by simplifying development, scalability, deployment and management capabilities.
• Enterprise Connectivity for AppFabric
  Making it easier for .NET application built on the AppFabric to integrate seamlessly with existing enterprise applications such as LOB systems and with existing Business-to-Business connectivity infrastructure
• On-Premises Server and Cloud Service Symmetry
  Facilitating the connection from on-promises applications to cloud services on Windows Azure platform and from cloud services to on-premises applications. Providing the option to deploy some integration services as cloud services on the Windows Azure platform.

At PDC we presented a demo that highlighted the first themes: Platform Alignment & Enterprise Connectivity.

This demo using a preview of an early prototype for WF (.NET 4.0) integration within BizTalk included the following scenarios:

• The hosting of WF instances inside a BizTalk Server host to implement system workflows.
• Flexible deployment options for WF inside BizTalk allowing WF instances to use the BizTalk messaging subsystems for persistence and reliability or bypass it to enable lower latency scenarios
• The new BizTalk Mapper designing transformation between WF data contracts (not just XML documents)
• Instrumentation of WF workflows to BizTalk Business Activity Monitoring (BAM), providing business process metrics and operational insight into WF based processes.

Expect more details, screenshots and videos of the demos to be available soon…

BizTalk Server future sneak peak at PDC 2009

If you have been wondering why we have been quiet for so long – well we have been busy lately… and for a good reason - within a week from now we are going to present some very exciting sessions and demos at the Professional Developers Conference in LA.

The first session will provide a sneak peak to BizTalk’s future with a demo of some cool innovations that will dramatically enhance BizTalk developer productivity and will make BizTalk more appealing to .NET developers using WF and WCF technologies.

Following are the details of the BizTalk sessions:

Session title: Microsoft BizTalk Server Futures and Roadmap

Speaker: Balasubramanian Sriram in 502A on Tuesday at 3:00 PM

Abstract: Learn how BizTalk Server 2009 lets you focus on writing the code to do the hardcore business logic and let BizTalk take care of moving the data. Hear how your development skills with Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) work seamlessly with the powerful integration platform of BizTalk. Find out how BizTalk aligns with the Microsoft application server in the longer term.

Session title: Connecting Applications with the Microsoft BizTalk Enterprise Service Bus

Speakers: Syed Rasheed, Dmitri Ossipov in 515B on Tuesday at 4:30 PM

Abstract: See how the BizTalk Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) enables you to build services that can be quickly located and connected, whether they live behind the firewall or in the cloud, without creating a brittle point-to-point link. Learn how to dramatically improve the service lifecycle of development, testing, and deployment by using the powerful messaging, routing, and transformation capabilities of the BizTalk ESB in your solution today, and get a glimpse of future plans for BizTalk service bus/pub-sub pattern.

Additionally we will host the following interesting chalk talk:

Title:  BizTalk and StreamInsight: A Better Together Story (Session 3 – Theatre Chalk Talk on Tuesday at 1:00 pm)

Speaker: Mark Simms

Abstract: SQL Server 2008 R2 introduces StreamInsight, providing a powerful platform for developing and deploying complex event processing (CEP) applications.  Come and learn how StreamInsight can be used to enable new capabilities in BizTalk for providing real-time monitoring and analytics for infrastructure and business events at scale.

Also at PDC we are hosting the following two BizTalk labs:

• Introduction to BizTalk Server 2009 Demo: Process Automation Solution with SharePoint & WF (lab code: SRV001)
• Introduction to the BizTalk ESB Toolkit: Providing Service Integration Agility  (lab code: SRV002)

Last but not least stop by the BizTalk demo booth in the Microsoft Products Pavilion if you want to chat with members of the BizTalk product team and other BizTalk experts. We will be presenting cool demos and would love to help you figure out how to leverage the most of BizTalk Server regardless of your level of knowledge of the product.

You can also meet us at the “Ask the Experts” session on Wednesday 5:30 – 7:00 PM.

See you next week,

The BizTalk team.  

Announcing BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Service Pack 1 Beta

Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1) is an update for BizTalk Server 2006 R2.  It includes fixes to issues that have been reported through our customer feedback platforms, as well as internally discovered issues.

It is available for download on the Microsoft Connect site to any customers that sign in to that site with their Live ID. Any feedback or issues you encounter can be reported here.
To see a listing of the customer-reported issues that are fixed in this service pack, click here.
For a description of some of the other updates included in this service pack, see What's new in BizTalk Server 2006 R2 SP1. For a list of of BizTalk Server hot fixes that are included in BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Service Pack 1 Beta click here.

Update on SOA Conference and Upcoming Events

Over the past few months we have talked to a number of customers and partners about our plans for upcoming Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) events.  We have heard loud and clear that travel budgets are limited, and have evaluated the various ways we can share Real World SOA best practices and training to our customers and partners.  As a result of these discussions we have decided not to host the Microsoft SOA conference this year; instead, we will deliver SOA related sessions (including sessions on BizTalk Server, .NET, Visual Studio and SharePoint Server content) at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles (November 17 – 19) and at TechEd EMEA in Berlin, Germany (November 9-13).

Today we are also announcing that we will be bringing a “Business Integration” road show to visit many major cities around the world, which will help us dialog with customers and partners who are not able to travel in this economic climate. 

For more details or to register to one of the road show events please see our Business Integration Road Show site.

Announcing the Availability of the Microsoft BizTalk Server Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007

We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of the Microsoft BizTalk Server Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007 on the Microsoft Download Center.

This SCOM Management Pack includes the following:

• Platform updates to support BizTalk Server 2009
• Maintained support for BizTalk Server 2006 R2
• Support for upgrade scenarios
• Fixed a high CPU utilization bug.

The Management Pack has already been downloaded and tested by 11 customers through our Technology Adoption Program (TAP) .

With this Management Pack you can deploy mission critical integration solutions on BizTalk Server 2009 and provide high quality monitoring through System Center Operation Manager.

You can now move forward with migration plans or new deployments for BizTalk Server 2009.

Good luck,

Ofer.

Microsoft announces new BizTalk Server 2009 SKUs for partners

Today at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference, we announced availability for BizTalk Server 2009 Enterprise Runtime Edition, BizTalk Server 2009 Standard Runtime Edition, and BizTalk Server 2009 RFID.

We recently launched BizTalk Server 2009, which is currently helping customers to integrate business applications and partners and to automate and simplify processes. With more than 8500 customers worldwide, the BizTalk customer base continues to grow rapidly.

We now offer multiple editions of BizTalk Server to enable any size ISV partner to leverage the product capabilities.

BizTalk Server 2009 Enterprise Runtime Edition: Every application needs to integrate with other applications in customer environments and solution companies do not want to reengineer and build an integration server from scratch. BizTalk Server 2009 Enterprise Runtime edition provides all integration capabilities with high availability features and all the adapters to systems like SAP, Oracle E-Business Suite and Mainframe systems. Enterprise Runtime is a special edition for partners designed to be used in support of their ISV application, as part of a unified solution. BizTalk Server 2009 Enterprise Runtime includes all capabilities, adapters and accelerations and supports scale out/failover, multi-server configuration with multiple message boxes.

BizTalk Server 2009 Standard Runtime Edition: BizTalk Server 2009 Standard Runtime Edition is a great option for partners who need low cost option and do not need high availability. Standard Runtime includes all the capabilities of BizTalk Server along with all adapters to embed inside ISV application. Standard Runtime allows partners to deliver 1 BizTalk application and connect to 1 external application. Goal of Standard Runtime is to provide integration capability at a very low price for ISV partners.

BizTalk Server 2009 RFID Edition: RFID is being used to transform business processes by companies across industry verticals. Microsoft first delivered RFID platform as part of BizTalk Server 2006 R2. Now in its 6^th version, BizTalk Server 2009 has made major enhancements to this platform including application platform for mobile RFID devices and support for industry standards like EPCIS, LLRP, and TDT/TDS. Microsoft also received EPCIS certification from GS1 EPCGlobal for BizTalk Server 2009. BizTalk RFID 2009 is a dedicated SKU for partners and customers interested in RFID deployments. It provides capabilities like high availability, plug and play devices; enterprise manageability with System center and SDK for partners and customers to build RFID enabled solutions etc.

More information on all BizTalk Server editions is available at http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/en/us/editions.aspx.

BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 FAQ

It’s been about 48 hours since we released the ESB Toolkit and the news are spreading very quickly.

We wanted all the relevant information on this hot topic to be easily discoverable.
Following is a set of Frequently Asked Questions regarding the new BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0, (this list is also published on the new ESB page on the BizTalk Developer Center on MSDN):

• When was the BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 officially released?
  The BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 along with documentation was released to the Web on Monday, June 8, 2009.
  
• From where are downloads provided?
  You can download the BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 and documentation from the Microsoft Download Center. The toolkit is packaged as binaries and samples in a Windows Installer.
  
• What happens to those customers who are currently using ESB Guidance 1.0?
  Customers who are using ESB Guidance 1.0 are strongly encouraged to upgrade to BizTalk Server 2009 and the BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0.  ESB Guidance 1.0 will be deprecated in the next few months. Also, proactive monitoring of the ESB 1.0 forums will no longer take place after the BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 is released.
  
• What license does it use?
  It uses a standard Microsoft, free, binary-only license.
  
• How is the BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 packaged?
  It is packaged as a binary-only Windows Installer (32- and 64-bit).
  
• Are BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 bug fixes provided?
  Bugs are addressed on a best-effort basis, by the BizTalk ESB Toolkit Team.
  
• Where do customers file bugs and requests?
  The BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 Connect site has been created to log bugs with the product teams and to provide updates to additional tools over time. Once you log a bug, someone will respond to you within five days with an acknowledgment and status.
  
• What is the BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 forum commitment?
  Assistance is provided through forums, with a one-year notice of deprecation plans. Any fixes and responses to questions in the forums are best effort, and we will continue to leverage the community to provide peer assistance, though with a capability to issue critical fixes if necessary.
  
• Where is the online community hosted?
  A dedicated ESB Toolkit Forum is provided.
  
• Will source code for signed binaries be provided?
  Source code for signed binaries will be available as a separate download (date to be determined).
  
• How does the support policy relate to the source code of the BizTalk ESB Toolkit?
  Microsoft will not support customizations to the BizTalk ESB Toolkit source code. The source for these components will be for reference only, not for making changes.  If there are critical issues that require it, we will use standard release processes to get fixes in place for the signed binaries. 
  

Announcing the Availability of the BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0

As we have pre-announced during several BizTalk sessions at TechEd North America last month, the BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0, formerly known as the ESB Guidance 2.0 - has been released today to the web. It is available on the new ESB page in the BizTalk Developer Center on MSDN.

This toolkit extends BizTalk Server 2009 capabilities to support a loosely coupled and dynamic messaging architecture. It functions as middleware that provides tools for rapid mediation between services and their consumers. Enabling maximum flexibility at run time, the BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 simplifies composition of service endpoints without “hard-wiring” them and also provides management of service interactions at enterprise scale.

Why did we change the name ?

The BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 has been renamed from “ESB Guidance2.0” to reflect the fact that it is now provided as a BizTalk Server 2009 value-add with a better support model. This will hopefully help customers develop mature ESB implementations that will be ready for enterprise-wide deployments.

How does this change support and community engagement?

The BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 Connect site has been created to log bugs with the BizTalk ESB Toolkit Team and to provide updates to additional tools over time. Once you log a bug, someone from the BizTalk ESB Toolkit team will respond to you within five days with an acknowledgment and status. Any future updates or tools will be provided through the Microsoft Download Center.

In addition, an ESB Toolkit Forum is provided on MSDN. These forums target online communities—in particular BizTalk MVPs and other BizTalk community lists. Best-effort assistance will be offered through a closely managed forum. That is, any fixes and responses to questions in the forums are best effort. We will continue to leverage the community to provide peer assistance, although with the capability of issuing fixes if necessary.

What’s new with the ESB Toolkit 2.0?

The BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 provides both architectural enhancements and new capabilities over the previous ESB Guidance 1.0. For more information, see SOA and Web Services section in the New Features in BizTalk 2009 Web page (rename will propagate soon …).

What does the BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 provide?

The BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 provides key building blocks that are required for implementing a comprehensive service-oriented infrastructure (SOI) including:

• Endpoint run-time discovery and virtualization.
  The service consumer does not need to be aware of the service provider location and endpoint details; a new or modified service provider can be added to the ESB, without interruptions to the service consumer.
• Loosely coupled service composition.
  The service provider and service consumer do not need to be aware of service interaction style.
• Dynamic message transformation and translation.
  The mapping definition between distinct message structure and semantics is resolved at run time.
• Dynamic routing.
  Run-time content-based, itinerary-based, or context-based message routing.
• Centralized exception management.
  Exception management framework, services, and infrastructure elements that make it possible to create, repair, resubmit, and compensate fault messages that service consumers or BizTalk components submit.
• Quality of service.
  An asynchronous publish/subscribe engine resolves different levels of service availability and provides high availability, scalability, and message traceability for ESB implementations.
• Protocol transformation.
  Providing the ability for service provider and service consumer to interact via different protocols including WS-* standards for Web Services. For example, a service provider can send an HTTP Web Service request, which will result in sending a message via the BizTalk SAP adapter.
• Extensibility.
  Providing multiple extensibility points to extend functionality for endpoint discovery, message routing, and additional BizTalk Server adapters for run time and design time.

How to get started with the BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0?

• Download the BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0
• Download BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 documentation
• View BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 documentation
• ESB Toolkit Forum

BizTalk at TechEd North America

After an exciting launch of the BizTalk Server 2009 release at RFID Journal Live in Orlando, we are ready to hit the road again and deep dive into the details of this release at TechEd next week May 11 –15 in LA, California.

We will present a generic session on Introducing BizTalk Server 2009 and the product roadmap as well as individual sessions on specific topics of the 2009 release and some popular themes.

We have designed a variety of breakout sessions , interactive sessions and hands on labs, to maximize attendees experience and learning about BizTalk throughout the conference week. Following is the full agenda sorted by dates:

Come join us at the BizTalk booths in the Blue section of the Technical Learning Center. Get into follow-up and deep dive  conversations with our speakers and members of the product team while watching compelling demos.

You may even try your luck to win cool prizes in one of the raffles that we will have throughout the week!

In the meantime you can find a wealth of new information on our refreshed BizTalk website.

See you at TechEd!!!

The BizTalk team.

Microsoft Announces General Availability of BizTalk Server 2009

Microsoft today announced the general availability of BizTalk Server 2009, which is available to Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) customers and will be made available broadly in nine languages — Chinese simplified, Chinese traditional, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean and Spanish — on May 1. BizTalk Server 2009 delivers new capabilities to help customers more effectively integrate disparate systems, enhance end-to-end enterprise connectivity and more quickly exchange data across multiple platforms resulting in increased efficiency and lower costs. Key improvements in the BizTalk Server 2009 release include:

• New Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) experience to make development teams more productive
• New adapters and numerous enhancements that provide increased enterprise connectivity.
• New RFID mobile capabilities that will enable innovative solutions to drive business value.

As the sixth release for this mature server product, BizTalk Server 2009 provides a solution that allows organizations to more easily connect disparate systems. Check out the the following customer case studies to find out what early adaptors are already doing with BizTalk Server 2009:

Energy Firm Integrates Processes, Speeds Business Rules Development by 87 Percent

Software Company Speeds Bank Validation Process, Expects 20 Percent Productivity Gain

 
Microsoft Division Connects Systems and Virtualizes Servers to Improve Productivity

Microsoft’s BizTalk Server 2009 release offers a range of new capabilities and advancements, including:

• Simple, Cost Effective SOA Connectivity: With new and updated adapters, BizTalk Server 2009 advances interoperability by providing more than 25 industry adapters that make it easier for customers to connect critical business applications such as SAP, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Siebel and Oracle E-Business Suite.
  
• Increased Developer Productivity: BizTalk Server enhances the first-class developer experience provided within Visual Studio 2008 by offering new integrated capabilities including visual debugging, unit testing, and access to code artifacts.
  
• Better Visibility into Data and Activities: BizTalk Server 2009 enhances its Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) capabilities by reducing the complexity associated with trusted data collection and simplifying access to data.
  
• Leverage the Benefits of Virtualization: With BizTalk Server 2009 running on Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V, businesses can take advantage of the benefits that virtualization provide including cost savings, production server consolidation and business continuity management.
  
• Simple RFID Solutions: BizTalk Server 2009 RFID capabilities reduce the need for complicated custom coding for disparate device types. Businesses can now easily extend RFID capabilities to mobile environments and experience the benefits from updated standards such as TDT, EPC EPCIS and LLRP.
  
• Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Made Easier: BizTalk Server is now a first class citizen within the application development lifecycle by including new project management, testing and deployment capabilities.

BizTalk Server 2009 is again offered in four editions: Enterprise, Standard, Branch, and Developer. There will be no price increase over previous versions, and customers interested in upgrading to BizTalk Server 2009 can access complete pricing and licensing information on May 1 for all versions of BizTalk Server 2009.

New BizTalk Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) Guidance

Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) is a module in BizTalk that captures business data and process milestones to allows business decision makers to gain insight of their in-flight processes.  Using BI tools to derive up-to-date metrics and key performance indicators from the BAM databases, users can forecast process trends and monitor processes in real-time. BAM also provides a mechanism to alert users to situations that require their intervention to prevent undesirable outcome or to encourage a beneficial result.

We have released last week a new whitepaper and code samples targeted at developers who are developing BAM solutions. The whitepaper titled “Business Activity Monitoring in Depth for Developers” covers the following topics:

• Business Activity Monitoring Overview – including the BAM observation model and how to define it
• Using BAM to instrument events from applications – programmatically and declaratively
• An overview and detailed description of the BAM infrastructure
• Retrieving BAM data through various BI tools
• Extending the BAM API with a RESTful services

The paper was authored by Jesus Rodriguez and Joe Klug from Microsoft’s partner Tellago. Jesus has included some more background information and acknowledgments for on his blog.

If you are looking into implementing a BAM solution using the BizTalk Server infrastructure I strongly recommend reading this paper and testing the sample code provided with it. The online version is available on MSDN, however for the full Word version and sample code you may want to download it.

Enjoy it,

Ofer

Initial customer feedback on BizTalk Server 2009

As most of you may know from a previous entry in this blog, the first beta release of BizTalk Server 2009 has been made publicly available.

You can download it directly, after signing with a Live ID, from here.

We also made available the first CTP of the BizTalk 2009 ESB Guidance in codeplex.

A major theme of this release is the enhanced developer productivity and the significantly improved developer team experience.

This was made possible through integration with Microsoft’s application life-cycle management (ALM) solution: Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server.

I wanted to share with you the exciting feedback from an early adopter.
Gulf Coast Seal Ltd. took part in the Technology Adaption Program (TAP) of BizTalk Server 2009. Today their solution is already in production.
Here is what Jeff Lynch, Gulf Coast Seal's Information Technology Manager, has to say about BizTalk Server 2009:

“I really can’t tell you just how happy using BizTalk Server 2009 as a fully supported part of VSTS and TFS makes me. …
…Having BizTalk Server 2009 seamlessly fit into our application development life cycle under Team Foundation Server is extremely important in terms of our confidence in using BizTalk as the “glue” which binds our business processes together. Today, over 48% of our sales transactions and over 25% of our entire revenue stream comes in via BizTalk Server and to say that it’s “vital to our business” is an understatement.”

“In case I haven’t already mentioned this. The build and deploy speed of this beta is excellent. I just built and deployed a four project solution in less than 30 seconds in a virtual machine. This is substantially faster than BizTalk Server 2006 R2. Even my complex solutions are building very quickly and deploying in a matter of minutes. It is also nice to see the deployment detail being written to the Output window in Visual Studio 2008.”

I thought this might encourage you to start downloading and testing the Beta version of BizTalk 2009 if you have not done so already J…

Ofer

Developing Integration Solutions with BizTalk Server 2006 R2

Here is some good news for veteran BizTalk developers & architects.
Remember the whitepaper: Developing Integration Solutions with BizTalk Server 2004 ?

I used to recommend it to any organization embarking on their first BizTalk project.

It contained an approach for the major part of the Application Life Cycle Management for BizTalk Server 2004.

Well, recently Dennis Mulder, a senior consultant with MCS has updated this document to BizTalk 2006 R2 titled:
Developing Integration Solutions using BizTalk Server 2006 and Team Foundation Server
Check out the newly updated document that provides techniques and best practices for designing, developing, and deploying solutions within Microsoft® BizTalk® Server 2006 (R2) in conjunction with Team Foundation Server.

We intend to create next year yet another version of this document to cover BizTalk Server 2009.

Enjoy it!

Ofer

BizTalk Server 2009 Beta and RFID Mobile GA

In September, we provided a few more details on BizTalk Server 2009 features and release timing.  Today we’re excited to report that we’re continuing to make progress toward a full release in the first half of 2009, and have additional news to share.

The first public beta of BizTalk Server 2009 is now available here.   This is a feature complete release, and we encourage our customers and partners to begin testing and exploring today. We’ll also continue to tune the code base, focused on performance, reliability, etc.  Final release is on track for the first half of 2009, and as we stated earlier this year, we’ll release an update to BizTalk every two years going forward. We’re really excited to be able to give customers a tremendous amount of additional value for their existing investments, and to continue to make BizTalk Server an affordable investment.

The second piece of our news relates to RFID Mobile, and today, we are proud to announce that BizTalk RFID Mobile is now generally available.  Customers currently using BizTalk Server 2006 R2 who have purchased Software Assurance will receive BizTalk RFID mobile as part of their licensing agreement. We are so glad to be able to provide customers with even more value for their existing investments- this is simply an extension of RFID platform out to the mobile edge.

We hope that BizTalk Server 2009 Beta and RFID Mobile will enhanced productivity, platform alignment, and enterprise connectivity to users.  We encourage you all to try out the beta and send us your feedback; we’d love your feedback on how to continue to improve BizTalk Server to meet your needs.

Best Regards,

Marjan Kalantar

Microsoft SOA & Business Process Conference 2009 Call for Content

As you know, our next Microsoft SOA & Business Process Conference will be taking place January 26-30, 2009 in Redmond, WA.  At this time, we’re still accepting session submissions and would love to hear your stories on how you are using a SOA & BPM solutions today to lower costs and achieve your business objectives.   Case studies describing best practices and lessons learned provide unrivaled insight and perspective from the in-the-trenches work that you are engaging in everyday.  We realize that our customers would rather hear from peers, which is why we have dedicated a majority of our sessions for customer stories. 

Session submissions: Sessions are 1 hour in length and can be delivered in either breakout or chalk-talk styles. To submit a session, please complete the fields below. All speakers will have their conference fee waived and non-Microsoft speakers will receive a $1000 stipend. Please make sure to specify which conference (see below), either customer or partner, the content is for.  The call for sessions will close on November 14, 2008 and confirmation will be sent out by November 25, 2008.  Final presentations must be submitted by December 16, 2008. 

Please fill out the attached document and send to:  sbpcon@microsoft.com. 

Content Tracks

Track 1: SOA & BPM Best Practices

The SOA & BPM Best Practices track will highlight case studies including technical architecture and business results attained through applying SOA to create business solutions.  Sessions will target lessons learned and best practices to deliver SOA projects.  We will examine key scenarios like Composite Applications and Service Connectivity and various technologies and patterns applied to achieve business results.  In addition, guidance will be provided on the practical realities regarding how to achieve a SOA today, and sponsorships within your organization.  Additional insights will be provided on the latest technical trends including cloud computing and its business and technical impact for your organization so that you can build a sound, long-term SOA strategy.

Track 2: Technologies