BizTalk 2009 - Announcement

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BizTalk 2009 - Announcement

On Friday Sept. 5, Microsoft will announce features for BizTalk Server 2009 and future releases plans to provide customers and partners with further clarification about what to expect. The two main highlights of this announcement are: BizTalk Server vNext (renaming, timing & features) and future plans (ship rhythm & high-level themes). We know that our enterprise customers need to make longer-term plans about their infrastructure investments, often 5+ years into the future. In response to this we are providing customers with greater visibility into the BizTalk Server release cycle

The goal is to provide a BizTalk Server release approximately every two years, plus additional interim releases of service packs as appropriate. Each full BizTalk Server release will integrate the previous major release with the latest service pack(s) and new functionality. Service packs will incorporate all of the current critical, non-critical, and customer-requested updates into one convenient package that has been extensively regression-tested by Microsoft and by customers during a beta test program. To the greatest extent possible, Microsoft strives to maintain BizTalk Server application compatibility for both full and service pack releases and performs extensive application compatibility tests with each release.

1. BizTalk Server vNext:
o Naming Change: We have also updated the name of the next release from BizTalk Server 2006 R3 to “BizTalk Server 2009”. By calling the product BizTalk Server 2009, we can clearly communicate this is a full product release with new and enhanced capabilities and updated platform support for customers to take full advantage of the latest technology wave (Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008, .NET Framework 3.5).
o BizTalk Server 2009 Timing: We will deliver a public CTP by the end of this calendar year. Additionally, BizTalk Server 2009 is on track for availability in the first half of calendar year 2009.
o Features: We bucket the 2009 release into 5 core feature areas, which are detailed further on the BizTalk roadmap page. These include platform support, SOA & web services, business to business integration, device connectivity and developer and team productivity.

2. Future Plans:
o Ship Rhythm: Microsoft’s commitment to maintain a rhythm of releases roughly every 2 years.
o High-Level Themes: We outlined priorities for the next couple of releases. Including:
§ Developer productivity enhancements (e.g. complex mapping);
§ Enhanced B2B support (e.g. complex trading partner management, expanded industry standards and schemas);
§ Low-latency messaging enhancements and ESB Guidance;
§ Enhanced device support for cross-enterprise asset tracking, enterprise manageability of devices, and key industry standards;
§ Real-time business event visibility through BI / BAM Enhancements; and
§ Integration with the latest new platform capabilities (to take advantage of the latest advances in the .NET Framework, Visual Studio, and Windows Server).

Key Talking Points

BizTalk Roadmap:
• With a clear focus on our customers key enterprise connectivity challenges, Microsoft will continue to invest in BizTalk Server enhancements and maintain a rhythm of releases roughly every 2 years.
• BizTalk Server is the enterprise connectivity solution for the Microsoft application platform, used by customers to connect and interoperate with systems - e.g. LOB systems, legacy systems, smart devices (RFID), B2B (SWIFT, EDI, etc.).
• By providing high-level themes on the next releases of BizTalk Server, Microsoft hopes to give clarity to customer’s technology purchasing decisions and planning for adoption of platform technologies.

BizTalk Server 2009:
· BizTalk Server 2009 will align with the newest Microsoft platform technologies including SQL Server 2008, Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5. Customers can take full advantage of the latest platform capabilities, in particular greater scalability and reliability, new Hyper-V virtualization support, and many advances in the latest developer tools.
· BizTalk Server 2009 also delivers many of the top features that have been requested by our customers, including a new UDDI v3 compliant services registry, new and enhanced LOB adapters (Oracle EBS, SQL), enhanced host systems integration (updates to MQ, CICS, IMS, CICS), a new Mobile RFID platform and management tools, enhanced B2B capabilities (updates to EDI, AS2, SWIFT), enhanced developer and team productivity through ALM integration with TFS and Visual Studio, and a new release of ESB Guidance 2.0 patterns and practices

Q: What new functionally will be delivered in BizTalk Server 2009?
A: One of the key features of BizTalk Server 2009 will be to deliver support for the latest versions of Windows Server, the .NET Framework, Visual Studio, and SQL Server. This will mean that BizTalk Server customers will continue to take full advantage of the platform’s latest improvements including: scalability for mission-critical workloads, improved support for next-generation web and service oriented applications, improved virtualization support and better business insight through Office.
Also, this BizTalk Server release will deliver additional customer-requested capabilities around enterprise connectivity. We will give more updates on specific features in the coming months, but at a high level we are planning some new investments in the release that includes:
New web service registry capabilities with support for UDDI (Universal Description Discovery and Integration) version 3.0
Enhanced service enablement of applications (through new and enhanced adapters for LOB applications, databases, and legacy/host systems)
Enhanced service enablement of “edge” devices through BizTalk RFID Mobile
Enhanced interoperability and connectivity support for industry protocols (like SWIFT, EDI, etc)
SOA patterns and best practices guidance to assist our customer’s implementations

You can find more details about BizTalk Server 2009 at http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/en/us/roadmap.aspx

Q&A from the Sessions:

Q: Why have you changed the name from R3 to 2009?
A: BizTalk Server 2009 will be a full release of the product. Naming it “BizTalk Server 2009” clearly communicates that it delivers a full upgrade to enable customers to take advantage of the latest platform wave (Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008, .NET Framework 3.5), and also adds a significant number of new customer requested functionality and enhancements.

Q: Does this name change alter the release timeframe for BizTalk Server 2009?
A: No. We are on track to deliver BizTalk Server 2009 in the H1 CY09 timeframe as previously announced. We are very pleased with the progress we’ve been making during our development cycle so far; we’ve already released early CTPs to TAP customers and have been getting good feedback. We will be releasing another CTP during Q4 CY09 and will use this feedback to help validate the features and readiness of the software.

Q: You said the next version of BizTalk Server was “6”, and would be the “Oslo” release for BizTalk Server? Should we assume this is “6”?
A: Yes, this is the sixth version of BizTalk Server; however it is being delivered ahead of Oslo technologies. Based upon the large number of customer requests for compatibility with the 2008 technology wave, we decided that it was more important to be responsive to customer input and ship as soon as the new BizTalk Server 2009 release was ready.

Q: What can customers expect from BizTalk Server in the future?
A: The charter of BizTalk Server remains consistent – it allows the Microsoft application platform to connect and interoperate with other kinds of systems - LOB systems, legacy systems, smart devices (RFID), and B2B integration (SWIFT, EDI, etc.). This has been the focus of BizTalk Server since it was initially released back in 2000 and continues to be its charter going forward.

Q: How does BizTalk Server relate to Oslo? How will BizTalk Server begin to adopt Oslo technologies?
A: ”Oslo” is the codename for Microsoft’s forthcoming modeling platform. Modeling is used across a wide range of domains and allows more people to participate in application design and allows developers to write applications at a much higher level of abstraction. “Oslo” consists of a new modeling tool (which helps people visually interact with models in rich and intuitive manner), a new modeling language (which allows developers to efficiently define domain models in a form that is natural to the author) and a new repository (which provides a shared store for linking together all of the various model artifacts that describe an application across both design and runtime).

BizTalk Server will follow a disciplined, evolutionary path to ease customer adoption of newer platform technologies, while continuing to invest in and enhance the current mature BizTalk architecture.

In fact, you don’t need to upgrade BizTalk Server to take advantage of “Oslo” – current BizTalk Server 2006 R2 or BizTalk Server 2009 customers can benefit from “Oslo” by being able to leverage and compose their services into new composite applications. Because BizTalk Server today already provides the ability to service enable LOB systems or trading partners as web services (using WCF supported protocols), this allows the “Oslo” modeling technologies to compose the services you already have.

Q: Isn’t UDDI part of Windows Server 2008 today? How does the BizTalk UDDI support differ?
A: As part of this next BizTalk Server release, we will be transitioning the packaging/distribution of Microsoft’s UDDI capabilities from Windows Server over to BizTalk Server. Given the close relationship of web service registries with metadata repository technologies, it makes sense to more closely align the distribution and evolution of Microsoft’s registry/repository functionality. As a result, we will be offering an enhanced registry (UDDI v3 compatible) with BizTalk Server’s next release. (Current UDDI v2 customers will receive guidance on how to move to UDDI v3 capabilities in a straight-forward manner.) This enables a core foundational element of your SOA infrastructure, and helps prepare for some of the forthcoming modeling and repository investments planned in our “Oslo” technologies.

Additional Resources

For more information go to:
· PressPass Q & A with Oliver Sharp, GM of BizTalk Server: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass
· BizTalk Website: http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/
· BizTalk Server Team Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/biztalk_server_team_blog/
· Steven Martin, director in the Connected Systems Division Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/stevemar/default.aspx