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Recently we received few support emails where people were asking about the overlap between BizTalk360 and ServiceBus360 when it comes to monitoring Azure Service Bus. Which ones should they go for? Also, the question was extended in such a way that if they are using Azure Logic Apps and Web API’s (Web Endpoints), then which is the better product to opt for.

Given both the products got the capability to monitor Azure Service Bus, it’s a valid question and let me try to clarify the positioning of both the products.

BizTalk360

When we released BizTalk360 version 8.1, we introduced a bunch of Azure Monitoring capabilities in the product like:

The Web End Points Monitoring capability was also heavily enhanced to support features like adding query strings, body payload, HTTP headers etc., in the request message and enriched validation like JSONPath, XPath, response time etc., on the response message. The changes made the feature super powerful for monitoring SOAP, REST/HTTP-based web endpoints.

The long term goal for us at BizTalk360 is to provide a consolidated single pane of glass operations, monitoring and analytics solution for customers who are using Microsoft Integration Stack for their integration needs. In the upcoming 8.5 version, we are extending Azure capability even further by bringing support for Azure Integration Accounts within BizTalk360.

If you are a Microsoft BizTalk Server customer and slowly started leveraging Azure Service Bus, Logic Apps, API apps, and Web API’s for your integration requirements, then BizTalk360 will be the ideal product both for Managing and Monitor the entire infrastructure. Typically Microsoft BizTalk Server customers who started utilizing some of the Azure Integration technology stacks like Azure Service Bus, Logics Apps, API apps will get benefitted by using BizTalk360.

When it comes to Azure Service Bus monitoring in BizTalk360, we only cover Azure Service Bus Queues. Currently, we do not cover Azure Service Bus Topics, Azure Service Bus Relay and Azure Service Bus EventHubs. Therefore, if you are using any of these technologies (that are not monitored with BizTalk360), then you’ll also need ServiceBus360.

ServiceBus360

ServiceBus360 is designed and developed to provide complete operations and monitoring capabilities for Azure Service Bus Messaging, Relay and Event Hubs. ServiceBus360 provides in-depth monitoring capabilities for:

ServiceBus360 is also not just a monitoring solution for Azure Service Bus. The idea of ServiceBus360 is to make it a world class product for complete operations, monitoring and analytics of Azure Service Bus. The product already supports a variety of productivity and advanced operational capabilities like:

The above is not the complete list of features – it just gives you the flavor of what can be accomplished with ServiceBus360. Clearly, BizTalk360 will not have this level of coverage for Azure Service Bus.

Therefore, if you are using Azure Service Bus for mission critical integration work, then ServiceBus360 is the viable option to improve productivity and avoid disaster.

Author: Saravana Kumar

Saravana Kumar is the Founder and CTO of BizTalk360, an enterprise software that acts as an all-in-one solution for better administration, operation, support and monitoring of Microsoft BizTalk Server environments. View all posts by Saravana Kumar