Lately I’ve been using custom Xslt more and more instead of the BizTalk mapping tool. I still use the mapping tool in easy scenarios when I just need to do some straight mapping or maybe even when I need to concatenate some fields, but as soon as I need to to some looping, grouping, calculations […]
Since the announcement of "Oslo" and the excitement around Windows WF and WCF, many customers have been concerned about their investment in BizTalk Server or questioning whether it is a wise investment today. Microsoft just published their roadmap for BizTalk Server including some important information about how the current and future releases will integrate with the "Oslo" modeling platform. In addition, the next release of BizTalk Server, still promised in the first half of '09, has been renamed BizTalk Server 2009 (formerly BizTalk Server 2006 R3) because of the significant improvements.
The good news is that Microsoft has clearly stated their intent on continued investment into this product over the coming years and has some clear ideas about the types of improvements you can expect to see in future versions.
I'm most excited about platform support in the 2009 release right now as I'd like to be running only visual studio 2008 on my machines and I LOVE Windows Server 2008 so I'd like to get all my test machines upgraded to the new OS. I'm interested to take a look at the new UDDI services and see how the directory support has been improved and can be used in a BizTalk solution as well. The idea of a directory for services is a powerful one and not many companies realize the value of them for the simplest thing like dynamic addressing of endpoints. All of your client applications can be built to use just a single address for the registry and lookup the endpoint information for the service.
I’ve been a fan of RSSBus from /n software for some time. A few weeks ago our Executive Director / Chief Architect / Technology Overlord recently asked me to build a real, live enterprise mashup application to demonstrate for our IT leadership group. Our goal was to show that RSSBus could be used to quickly […]
Today Microsoft announced an updated Roadmap for BizTalk Server highlighting the next release of BizTalk and outlining plans for future releases every two years.
Included with this is a name change. BizTalk Server 2006 R3 will now be called BizTalk Server 2009.
While most people will see this as a simple name change. What this represents is Microsoft’s commitment to BizTalk Server as an Enterprise Class Integration Platform. This new name combined with the forward looking roadmap clearly showcases the future of BizTalk, which until now was a little unclear.
What to expect in the 2009 release of BizTalk:
Oliver Sharp talked about a release for BizTalk 2009 in the first half of 2009. He also talked about a CTP release that would be available around the end of the year.
And best yet! We have a new logo for BizTalk Server 2009!
Good communication today about not only the name change, but more importantly, the updated roadmap for BizTalk Server (read Q & A here, see roadmap here, and see BizTalk home page here, see Steve Martin’s announcement here).
For me, the most important things communicated were:
greater clarification on what the Oslo release means to BizTalk Server
specific features […]
Today, we announced updated plans for the next major version of BizTalk Server. We launched the first version of BizTalk Server back in 2000. Eight years later, we’ve seen our installed base grow to 8,200 customers making it the most widely deployed solution for enterprise connectivity in heterogeneous environments. We’re hearing from our customers that BizTalk has become a core part of their infrastructure, running mission critical applications. Our partners (over 1500 of them) tell us that the applications and adapters they build for BizTalk have become a significant part of their business. This positive feedback is our greatest reward.
We’re excited to offer more details on the next version of BizTalk Server-now dubbed BizTalk Server 2009 to reflect the full release that it is. Initially, We disclosed this as BizTalk Server 2006 R3, but it has so many exciting new features that it deserves a to be referenced as a full release. BizTalk Server 2009 will focus on a few key areas; as always, these areas are determined based on what customers have told us are their priorities. They are platform support, SOA and Web Services, B2B integration and developer productivity. In particular, the platform updates enable greater scalability and reliability, new Hyper-V virtualization support, and many advances in the latest developer tools.
I should also note that we’re still on track for the final release of BizTalk Server 2009 in 1H of CY2009. For all the features and details, go here or to PressPass.
We’ve actually already delivered a first Community Technology Preview (CTP) to select customers and we’re getting great feedback! The next CTP update is coming sometime in Q4 of CY08. We’ll use this broad feedback from customers and partners to help us validate the features and readiness of the product.
Looking into the future, the goal is to continue to provide a BizTalk Server release approximately every two years, plus additional interim releases of service packs as appropriate. At each milestone, we will take advantage of as much platform technology as is reasonable and consumable by our customers and will take advantage of updates to .NET, Visual Studio, Windows Server and SQL.
We’re also hearing from many of our BizTalk customers that they’re beginning to accelerate the development of more complex composite applications. As you know, one of our missions with “Oslo” is to simplify the development/deployment/management of composite applications through a model-driven approach to the application lifecycle. We see our BizTalk customers benefitting from Oslo’s core technologies, and are committed to providing choice, flexibility and a clear integration path for those who are interested in taking advantage.
Some very interesting news around BizTalk today. Not only was there the announcement around BizTalk's future on the BizTalk Server Roadmap page, but there was a Q&A session with Oliver Sharp , the General Manager for the Connected Systems Read More……(read more)
Completely off topic for this blog, but interesting nonetheless: Verisign yesterday reported that they processed more that 48 billion DNS queries per day in the second quarter of 2008. Wow.
VeriSign also maintained 100 percent uptime for the DNS system during the second quarter, as it has for the past decade. I think this must be […]
On Wednesday evening my dear friend, our colleague and my mentor Patrick Tisseghem passed away. Words fall short to describe what Patrick meant for me, both in my professional and personal life. He was that kind of guy you could rely on, no matter what happened, always friendly and always helpful.
Patrick, it was a great privilege to know you and work with you. I can only join his close friend and colleague Karine, and say: you will last forever.
My thoughts go out to his wife, their two daughters and his family.
We will miss you pal.
…“We prefer to use the term secure traversal through diverse network topologies, instead"
-Jon Flanders talking about the BizTalk Connectivity Services (Relay)
Thank you all for attending the BizTalk User Group meeting in Stockholm last night. I personally did not think I’d find REST as interesting as I did. And it was obvious I wasn’t the only one stunned by Jon Flanders awesome presentation. Anyone signed up for his book yet?
Thanks Jon, we hope to see you again next year.