Microsoft Releases BizTalk Server 2004 to Manufacturing

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

This week, Microsoft released its BizTalk Server 2004 to manufacturing, and is set to start shipping it through its worldwide channel on April 1. With this updated version of BizTalk, Microsoft has added more features, but has decided to back off on its "Jupiter" project, which would have integrated BizTalk with content management programs in a single bundle.

BizTalk Server 2004 is part of the .NET-enabled Windows Server System, the brand name and stack of integrated software that Microsoft launched in April 2003 along with Windows Server 2003. (The Windows Server System includes BizTalk Server, Commerce Server, Content Management Server, Host Integration Server, SQL Server, Exchange Server, SharePoint Portal Server, Project Server, Real-Time Communications Server, Internet Security and Acceleration Server, Systems Management Server, Operations Manager, and Application Center.) In 1999, when Microsoft first started to talk about "Next Generation Windows Services" (remember that?), which eventually became .NET, BizTalk Server was one of the linchpins of the .NET strategy because it was the piece of Microsoft middleware that would execute Extensible Markup Language (XML), Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), and other protocols that link databases, email, documents, and other systems and middleware programs together to create Web services applications.

With this announcement, Microsoft has put its third iteration of BizTalk Server into the field. BizTalk Server 2000 shipped at the end of 2000 and BizTalk Server 2002 shipped in February 2002. Microsoft has ceased sales of BizTalk Server 2002, and says that customers who want to use the older version have to buy a license to the newer one and then downgrade to the older version. Customers who were hoping for the Jupiter product, which would have put BizTalk Server, Content Manager Server, and Commerce Server all in a single bundle--and presumably at a lower price than the sum of the individual programs when bought separately--are going to have to buy the three components and integrate them.

With BizTalk Server 2002, Microsoft beefed up the security on the software, improved integration with the company's Visual Studio .NET integrated development environment, supported SOAP 1.1, XML 1.0, and Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) to transform documents between different formats. XML covers the grammar and layout of documents set up for data interchange, and SOAP is the protocol that rides on top of the TCP/IP network protocol that allows XML documents to be a medium through which applications can communicate with each other. BizTalk 2002 also supported the United Nations Electronic Interchange for Administration, Commerce and Transport (UN/EDIFACT) and the ANSI X12 EDI standard document specification. BizTalk Server 2002 also integrated with Microsoft Operations Manager, the management program for Windows servers, and with Application Center 2000, the application development workflow manager for Windows servers.

With BizTalk Server 2004, Microsoft is adding accelerators that allow BizTalk to plug into the RosettaNet trading network set up by some of the biggest names in business. The program also has features to help companies meet HIPAA compliance for health records storage. It will also support the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications) protocol developed by financial institutions to govern electronic transactions and the HL7 protocol for the sharing information between healthcare organizations. Microsoft has also launched a BizTalk accelerator for financial services, and dozens of BizTalk adapters are available to allow end user applications to plug into the BizTalk middleware without any custom coding. With BizTalk Server 2004, Microsoft has also more tightly integrated the program with its new version of the Office personal productivity suite, dubbed the Office System these days. Specifically, system administrators can use Excel or SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to access "business activity monitoring" functions inside BizTalk to see how well the business processes they have created are performing and to pictorially view the business logic embodied in BizTalk applications using the Visio tool inside Office. The server now also offers single sign on for end users accessing BizTalk-based applications.

If you can't wait until April 1 to get your hands on BizTalk Server 2004, you can download it at http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/downloads. Microsoft says that a Pentium-based machine with Pentium-class processors running at 450 MHz, with 512 MB of memory is the minimum configuration suitable for running BizTalk Server 2004. That's about twice the machine that BizTalk Server 2002 required, and if history is any guide, a reasonable base configuration for BizTalk Server 2004 is more like a 1 GHz, 1 GB server. Servers have to be running Windows 2000 (Server, Advanced Server, and Datacenter Server) with SP4 or Windows Server 2003 (Standard, Enterprise or Datacenter Editions) to support BizTalk Server 2004. Windows Server 2003 Web Edition cannot support BizTalk Server 2004, and SQL Server Personal Edition is not supported, either. You do, however, need SQL Server 2000 Developer, Standard or Enterprise Edition. The new BizTalk Developer Edition can run on Windows XP Professional with SP1.

Pricing with BizTalk Server 2004 is not much different from the prior version. The new Developer Edition costs $749 per seat--provided you are on the Microsoft Developers Network. This edition is crippled in that it can only be used to develop and test BizTalk applications. The Partner Edition, which costs $999 per server processor, can integrate with up to three applications and three trading partners. The Standard Edition, which costs $6,999 per processor, can integrate with up to 10 applications and 20 trading partners. The full-blown Enterprise Edition, which costs $24,999 per processor, does not have any governors on it when it comes to applications or partners. The BizTalk accelerators cost $4,999 per processor for BizTalk 2004 Standard Edition and $19,999 per processor for BizTalk 2004 Enterprise Edition. Microsoft sells only two BizTalk adapters--one to link to IBM's WebSphereMQ message queuing middleware and one to link to SAP's ERP applications--and these cost $14,999 per processor.