Current economic situation is real tough. Many small and large companies are having tough times. The key question for you to ask yourself before making a long term commitment to EAI platform is “Will the vendor be around in next 10-15 years or in today’s economy will they be around after 6 months?”.

Let me tell you one thing, we will be standing besides our customers in 10-15 years from now. We will be launching BizTalk Server 2009 in next quarter. We have already started product planning for BizTalk V. Next(V7) and V.Next +1(V8). We are collecting information from our key customers to understand where they want us to take BizTalk. We are hearing following key requirements

1. Support additional integration paradigms like ESB(today we have ESB Guidance but customers want Out of Box Support)
2. Low Latency support.
3. We are also getting lot of inputs on support for newer Microsoft technologies like WF and WCF. We will surely be supporting all new Microsoft technologies at right time. We already support WCF as first class citizen in BizTalk. All new adapters are being built on WCF. We will do same with WF in future releases. :)

What capabilities do you want us to add in BizTalk Server?

Your investment in Microsoft technology will provide return on investment for years to come.

Every organization in the world is forced to evaluate every $ spent. Have you looked at how much you spend on your EAI/Middleware Server/platform? I bet you can save tons of money by moving to BizTalk(not Geico :)).

Let me share pricing structure for BizTalk Server and I will let you compare it to your existing infrastructure. If you feel you are paying too much call me(425 705 1505). Really that is my office number!!! :)

BizTalk has 5 versions to satisfy every customers requirement.

• Evaluation Version: This is full Enterprise edition with free 120 days license. This is great if you want to download and play with BizTalk and do not want to spend any money on it.
• Developer Edition: This is again full Enterprise edition with no restriction other than it cannot be used in production environment. This is great for folks who want to do regular development. It is only $499. Developer Edition is free with MSDN premium subscription.
• Enterprise Edition: Enterprise edition includes all the capabilities including EAI, B2B, BPM, BAM,Host integration server and RFID.  This is Designed for customers with enterprise-level requirements for high volume, reliability, and availability. It comes will all the adapters and accelerators. Enterprise edition is only $34,999 per proc. Compare this to any other EAI product and it will be no where near as costly.
• Standard Edition: Standard edition is becoming very popular with many customers. It is exactly same as Enterprise edition with 2 key differences first it limits 5 BizTalk applications on the server and 2 CPUs on single server. Other than this you get everything at just $8,499 per proc.
• Branch Edition: This was a recent edition to support branch scenarios or in other words Hub and Spoke scenarios. This is crucial for customers who want ability to run a limited version of BizTalk at edge of enterprise. This edition also provides BizTalk RFID capabilities for customers who want to deploy RFID solutions. This is available at $1800 per proc.

You can get started on BizTalk at no cost. In other words you can spend anywhere from $0 to $34,999 per proc and get the right product for your environment. I am confident that is lowest price in the industry. BizTalk is easy deploy, learn and build on. Hence it has lowest TCO. Let me know if you think any other product can match this!!! I am waiting…

January job numbers were worst than expected. Roughly 600000 more jobs were lost. Many organizations are struggling. Few weeks back I read, 30% retailers may have to declare bankruptcy. Everyone needs to tighten the belts.

I have already stopped eating out and am paying for my Kindle by selling my old books. :):) Great example of cutting cost, generating new revenue stream and investing for future…

On serious note, Organizations are looking hard at all the expenses and investments to cut where ever possible. It is easy to ride the growth wave and ignore spending but in tough time like these organizations really need to look hard at their spending plans and make sure they focus on reducing costs and improving efficiencies. 

Over next few posts I will try to convince you that BizTalk can save you lot of money and help run your business more efficiently.

I know some of you are skeptical but BizTalk is all about

• Integrating existing infrastructure instead of replacing it
• Driving value out of legacy environments
• Automating inefficient manual processes
• Improving developer productivity (Yes that is true!!!)
• Gaining Visibility into inefficient business processes
• Lowering costs in B2B transactions like EDI, SWIFT

Stay tuned more coming…

Following are some amazing statistics about BizTalk Server. :) Really amazing stuff.

I started my career @ Baan Info systems in India as software engineer responsible for building Integration technology for Baan ERP. After Baan, I worked as solutions architect for e-ET, EAI solutions Designer for Nortel and Senior software architect for SAMSys/Sirit. Mostly working on integrating applications or building integration technologies. From 2000-2002 I designed an Integration platform based on Peer-2-Peer architecture at e-ET called Enterprise Process Manager.  Past couple of years at Microsoft I have worked on Product Development of VSTS Team Foundation Server and then as business owner for Microsoft RFID platform. After recent reorganization, along with Microsoft RFID Platform I will also start driving BizTalk Server Business.

Day by Day World is becoming smaller and integrating business processes & applications in a diverse world is the most critical challenge for organizations. BizTalk - Microsoft Integration Server helps organizations solve exactly this challenge. Staring today this blog will expand its reach. I will start focusing on world beyond RFID and try to cover various topics around BizTalk - Microsoft Integration Server.

Let me know what you would like to hear from me about BizTalk.