Being an ex BizTalk Technical Specialist, this one is close to my heart 🙂 BTS 2009 RTM’d recently and the General Availability is imminent. Summarised, here are the most important changes (and you can visit the url: http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/en/us/roadmap.aspx#WhereWereGoing )
Key Features & Functions in BizTalk Server 2009:
%u00b7 Supports the latest Microsoft platform technologies including SQL Server 2008, Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5.
%u00b7 New Hyper-V Virtualization Support: Takes advantage of the latest virtualization improvements included as part of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, which can lead to reduced costs through lower hardware, energy, and management overhead, plus the creation of a more dynamic IT infrastructure
%u00b7 New Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) support: Provides support for Team Foundation Server (TFS), and allows development teams to be able to leverage the integrated source control, bug tracking, support for team development, Project Server integration and support for automating builds via MSBuild.
%u00b7 New Web Services Registry — Includes a UDDI 3.0 registry which provides support for registry affiliation, extended discovery services, digital certificates and extensibility for a subscription API.
%u00b7 New Mobile RFID Platform and device management – Delivers a new lightweight platform for a variety of mobile devices, which simplifies the development of mobile applications that expose relevant, real-time business information. Also include support for key RFID industry standards (including LLRP, TDT, TDS, WS Discovery and partial EPCIS support).
%u00b7 Delivers other top features requested by our customers, including:
%u00b7 new and enhanced LOB adapters (Oracle EBS, SQL)
%u00b7 enhanced mainframe and AS400 host systems integration (updates to MQ, CICS, IMS, CICS)
%u00b7 enhanced B2B integration capabilities (updates to EDI, AS2, SWIFT)
%u00b7 a new release of ESB Guidance 2.0 patterns and practices.