I just got back from the RosettaNet Global Partner Conference 2004 which was held in Singapore last week. This was the first RosettaNet event I've attended and I was quite excited to be able to meet the RosettaNet folks from Malaysia, Singapore and the US. After listening to the the opening address by Dr. Lee Boon Yang, Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts, and also talking with Singaporean companies and customers, I couldn't help feeling that Malaysia was behind in not only it's RosettaNet implementation but behind in B2B commerce in general. On the other hand, I also saw many Malaysian customers at the conference too, who like me were looking to get a sense of the momentum RosettaNet in the region, to help them with their own implementation plans and road maps.

I was also fortunate to be able to spend sometime with some senior folks from the Microsoft Product Group in Redmond (and one of the dudes that wrote my favorite BizTalk Server 2002 book, BizTalk Unleashed), who are directly responsible for building our Solution Accelerator for RosettaNet, which sit atop BizTalk Server 2004 (currently being built as we speak). You know what was most encouraging to me? The fact that these guys (our Redmond product group) are so close to RosettaNet (the organization) and continually engage in dialogs around new standards, existing implementations, challenges of adoption, and generally how to help RosettaNet with the wider adoption of their standards. Sometimes, even I think that Microsoft may be a bit disconnected from the rest of the world, but then I get to witness truly inspiring exchanges such as these, and I know that we sincerely have our finger on the pulse; well the E-Business team certainly does - I saw it first hand.

I can't wait for the RosettaNet Accelerator for BizTalk Server 2004 (which will be our third version of this accelerator) to be ready. This is really going to help our manufacturing customers in Malaysia and globally automate their supply chains end-to-end, and do it all natively in .NET; that's a beautiful thing. Keep watching http://www.microsoft.com/rosettanet for more details as we get closer to the launch.