This documents helps you understand the key technologies from Microsoft and IBM in the integration space.  It then compares and contrasts the various products and technologies.  The goal of the document is to provide you with apples to apples comparisons and endeavours to be factual and straight forward.  This document will be posted on microsoft.com shortly.  You can read it first here.

All comments welcome. Fixed the URL...

Tommorrow I start my sixth year at Microsoft.  I can certainly sympathesize with those whose birthdays' are on 9/11.  That's my MS birthday (in Y2K) and I'm not sure whether I should be happy or be sad as I recall my first day and a year later the vivid memory of one MS employee from NY in her office receiving phone call after phone call relaying the news of numerous lost friends.  On my second day at Microsoft, 5 years ago tommorrow, I flew down to a conference in San Diego to present to a group of MS internal folks on a technology that no-one knew about (BizTalk), that had some pretty confusing terminology (there are 2 types of ports), had a tutorial that really didn't work (I know how you feel when tutorials are broken) and I was still very much learning in real-time (Thanks Larry&Susie).  I had flown from NZ into the USA two days earlier and I didn't even have a US bank account, let alone a credit card which caused some hilarity when it came to the "pay for the hotel" step.  By the end of the trip I had earned the nickname "BootBoy" for reasons that someone else can explain :). 

Today - 5 years later - the BizTalk Server community is booming as developers around the world use BizTalk Server for EAI, B2B and BPM projects.  Indeed, you can find about 2 million hits on the web if you search for "BizTalk Server".  It has been a pleasure working with so many of you.  We have come a long ways, yet we have lots of opportunity ahead to make it even simpler to integrate applications and trading partners using business process management.

This week at PDC we will have two sessions dedicated to BizTalk Server.  The first by Joe Sharp is focused on the BizTalk Server 2006 capabilities.  The second by Patric McElroy will give you a glimpse into some future thinking (mostly >> 2006).  If you aren't on site then you will find some of Patric's demos (not all but some) make there way to Channel 9 along with a brief glimpse of some guy wearing an All Blacks vs. Lions tee-shirt<g> . 

While I'm not giving a PDC technical session I'll be run off my feet with other commitments on site, especially on Wednesday.  So if you see me feel free to say hi!  Indeed, tommorrow as I get on a plane and again fly down to California, this time to Los Angeles, it makes me giggle inside how much this trip has in common with my 2nd day 5 years ago...

Sunny Seattle is not a myth.  I should always plant grass seed on July 21st because to date it has rained exactly once since!  Not so great on my grass but my vitamin D count is at an all-time high.

I'm in a surf's up mood, of course there isn't much swimmable surf anywhere close to Redmond but it did drive some inspiration for a t-shirt you might see if you are attending PDC.  Speaking of PDC it is going to be a lot of fun - more on that later.  Unfortunately because of everything going on in preparation for PDC including a tour I'm doing this week across the USA I had to made a hard decision and I pulled out of TechEd NZ and Australia.  While that was super dissapointing for me personally (its the first TechEd NZ/USA I'll miss as an attendee or presenter since '99) - you will still get the BizTalk Server 2006 content delivered as I've been helping some of the excellent local folks with my content.

In case you haven't seen it I did a Tech Talk with Paul Ballard from theserverside.net which is now on line.  Paul is a cool guy and his camera-man had an even more interesting background.  His camera-man's day job was literally shooting combat footage around the world  (which he has won numerous awards for) so setting up a stage for me was child's play in comparison.

Enough commentary - here is why you need to read this entry.  We finally released the BizTalk Server 2004 Loadgen tool.  Lots of folks want to put load on their BizTalk Servers and I couldn't count the number of people who continue to write single-threaded load generation applications and wonder why we don't perform (its because you aren't putting enough simultaneous load into us by serializing the input at the client end).  Enough of that, let's give you a copy of the loadgen tool that we use internally for testing so you can use the same thing. The loadgen tool can exercise a variety of adapters, has an extensible framework for you to add your own, xml configuration and is generally pretty cool.  As I said we use it for all kind of internal performance testing and now you can get access to it right here.

While I've reached an all time low on blog posting in the last month or so, I'll try and make it up in September starting September 14th.

In more good news today we announced our revamped adapter strategy.  Yes you asked for the major adapters directly from Microsoft and we listened.

The specifics are: Siebel, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards Enterprise One and One World, Oracle Business Suite and Database, TIBCO Rendezvous and Enterprise Messaging Service and Amdocs Clarify.

Many more details will be forthcoming as we getting closer to launching these in the 2006 launch timeframe.

Existing customers of the .NET IWay versions of these adapters get a good deal as we will provide you the Microsoft adapter for the cost of software assurance only so continue to purchase the IWay versions for BizTalk Server 2004 until our versions are complete.

I took the whole week off from work last week and the wet weather had a week off too! I was soooo proud of myself as I didn't read email once (ok once, but that was after an urgent phone call and under duress only).  I stayed at home while my various relatives flew up from NZ and Australia.  I now have a nice sun-tan and I did a bunch of entertaining things to my house including shovelling rocks and soil and building walls and sinking concrete posts.  If you need a bunch of river-rocks for landfill and have a big trucker and something to put it into the truck then let me know...

While I was playing the team finished the first beta of BizTalk Server 2006.  This is our most solid beta 1 in the 5 years we have been working on the product.  This beta is functionality complete and having the CTP release really helped.  Take it for a test-drive and let us know what you think!

To get BizTalk Server 2006 Beta 1:
1) Log into https://beta.microsoft.com using your Microsoft ® Passport Network Account.
2) On the blue bar near the top of the page click on “Sign in as Guest” and use the Guest ID “BizTalkBetaTeam”
3) On the left side under “Program Info”, click on “Survey” and complete the “BizTalk Server 2006 Open Beta Nomination Form”
4) Complete and submit the form.

Get Connected to Free Product Support and Tremendous Online Collaboration

Have you ever wanted to speak to Microsoft developers of a specific feature of BizTalk Server? I am sure your answer was “Yes let me at them”, so the Business Process Integration Division is extending an invitation to all customers to join our key feature developers, program managers, and testers in the following newsgroups:

We’ve been working very hard over the past year to connect with folks just like you and want to include you in our community of Most Valuable Professionals (MVP), developers, information technology professionals, chief information officers, chief executive officers, or any other role within large, medium, and small companies that hang out in our online newsgroup communities. We want to have you join in this vibrant online community to ask those questions you always wanted to ask but did not know where to go. Well, now you know where to go, we want you to come on in and join us!

If you are new to BizTalk Server, try out the NewUser newsgroup, Microsoft.public.biztalk.newuser.

 We’re offering two levels of interaction with Microsoft Corporation employees as follows:

1. Managed Newsgroup Support
2. Unmanaged Newsgroup Support

Managed Newsgroup Support

MSDN managed newsgroups are available in English to MSDN Universal, Enterprise, Professional and Operating Systems subscribers to receive free technical support on select Microsoft technologies as well as to share ideas with other subscribers. MSDN managed newsgroups provide:

• Unlimited on-line technical support - keep your PSS incidents
• A commitment to respond to your post within two business days
• Over 200 newsgroups to choose from
• Spam protection for your e-mail address when posting items

Go to the following URL to sign up: http://msdn.microsoft.com/newsgroups/managed .  These newsgroups are monitored by Microsoft support engineers and product group team member as described above.

Unmanaged Newsgroup Support

MSDN unmanaged newsgroups are available to all individuals.

Go to the following URL to participate: http://msdn.microsoft.com/newsgroups. These newsgroups are monitored by Microsoft product group members, other customers like you, most valuable professionals, and various other individuals.