It’s finally happened!! Microsoft has officially opened a public beta for BizTalk Server 2013. The beta bits can be downloaded here.

Here are my personal top 5 new features of BizTalk Server 2013. I know that many of my customers have been asking for some of these features for a while.

  1. Too many new adapters to keep up with
    • Integration with RESTful services – new BizTalk adapters provide CRUD operations using REST endpoints.
    • New and Improved SharePoint adapter – Previous SharePoint versions did not support client-side API calls so the BizTalk Adapter required installing a special web service on the SharePoint front-end server(s). SharePoint 2010 and the soon-to-be-released SharePoint 2013 both support client-side API calls. The new BizTalk Adapter for SharePoint takes advantage of these client-side APIs to provide an easier, more seamless integration experience.
    • Azure Service Bus integration – adapters to connect to Azure Service Bus endpoints
    • SFTP adapter – If I had a dime for every time someone asked about an SFTP adapter…
  2. ESB Toolkit 2.2 – while the internals of the ESB Toolkit is largely untouched, the latest release boasts a better configuration experience, and full-fledged support.
  3. Dynamic send port configuration – You can now specify which adapter handler your dynamic send port will use rather than being stuck with the default handler.
  4. Artifact Dependency Tracking – The BizTalk Server Administration console provides better explanation of dependencies among artifacts (for example, orchestration X requires: schemas Y and Z).
  5. General Performance Improvements – Significant changes under the covers has improved the performance of send port when using ordered delivery as well as the mapping engine

Although not available yet, I’m also excited that a new Azure VM with the BizTalk Server 2013 Beta is on its way.

I’m also pleased to announce that QuickLearn Training is diligently working on new versions of all of our Developer and Administrator BizTalk Server courses designed for BizTalk Server 2013.