Q1: What is BizTalk Server?

BizTalk is an Integration Server designed to connect the people, processes and information that you need to effectively manage and grow your business. BizTalk Server 2009 builds upon the Business Process Management and SOA/ESB capabilities in prior releases to help organizations extend core process management technologies even further.

Q2: What are the Benefits of using BizTalk Server?

Extend Supply Chains to the Edge
BizTalk Server 2009 helps organizations cost effectively manage their supply chain from the factory to the storefront. An end to end integrated supply chain allows organizations to drive maximum efficiency through visibility into critical business processes, and tighter collaboration with trading partners. With new capabilities such as native support for EDI and RFID, BizTalk Server 2009 provides the ability to gather data from the edge of the enterprise, enabling real time visibility across business processes and trading partners.

Connect SOA and Interop on a Unified Platform
BizTalk Server 2009 provides the infrastructure to connect existing applications (regardless of the platform) and to compose, expose, and consume new services. This allows you to get more out of the investments that you have already made and minimize the cost of integrating the new pieces of technology that you have acquired. Because BizTalk Server includes tools to connect both proprietary and standards based systems and pre-integrates with the .NET Framework, BizTalk Server is a central part of any SOA strategy.
Additionally, a broad array of technology and application adapters is available for BizTalk Server. With out-of-the-box support for everything from transport protocols such as FTP, SOAP, and MQSeries, to high level integration with line of business applications such as PeopleSoft, SAP, and Siebel, you choose how you want to connect applications, platforms and people, we provide the tools to do it.

1) Line of business application adapters
2) WS-* based standards
3) .NET Framework (WCF, Windows SharePoint Services, SQL Server, Microsoft Dynamics)
4) Mainframe and midrange systems
5) XML and Web Services protocols (e.g. SOAP)
6) Devices (RFID)

Deliver Enterprise Proven Solutions
BizTalk Server is the most widely deployed business process server, entrusted for mission critical process in organizations of all sizes and industries. BizTalk Server 2009 Enterprise Edition provides built-in support for load balancing, helping organizations to deliver 24/7 availability for their mission critical solutions across their organization. BizTalk Server is engineered to be fault-tolerant, employing easily-configured and manageable SQL Server clustering to ensure no single point of failure.
Additionally, building on our best in class setup and configuration capabilities and maintaining the core architecture of its previous versions, BizTalk Server 2009 provides a seamless upgrade path for current BizTalk Server 2004 , 2006, and 2006 R2 customers. Regardless of the size of your organization, BizTalk Server 2009 is the best-in class enterprise infrastructure.

Quick Facts
1) Over 8,500 customers worldwide
2) 90% of the Fortune Global 100 use BizTalk Server
3) 12 of the 15 largest retailers in the world
4) 5 of 10 largest hotel chains in the world
5) 6 of the 8 largest U.S. pharmaceutical companies
6) 4 of the 5 largest U.S. electronics parts manufacturers
7) 9 of the 10 largest U.S. telecommunications companies
8) 9 of the 10 largest U.S. Aerospace and Defense Companies
9) 5 of the 8 largest U.S. chemical companies
10) 4 of the 5 largest railroads in the U.S.
11) 9 of the 10 largest insurance companies in the world
12) 23 of 27 EU member governments

Q3: What are the different BizTalk Server 2009 Editions?

Branch Edition (New)
This edition enables a true hub and spoke scenario when paired with the Enterprise Edition; Branch Edition will help organizations make new intra-organizational and departmental connections for intelligent data and process sharing.

Enterprise Edition
This edition is ideal for enterprise customers and large organizations looking for an advanced BPM and SOA platform with unlimited scalability. It now includes BizTalk adapters and accelerators, Host Integration Server (HIS), RFID and EDI in the box.

Standard Edition
This edition is a comprehensive BPM and SOA solution for midsize businesses or departmental solutions. It also includes BizTalk adapters and accelerators, HIS, RFID and EDI in the box.

Developer Edition
Limited to designing, developing and testing solutions, Developer Edition is the ideal solution for application development in pre-production environments.

Q4: What does Business Process Management (BPM) mean?

Business process management refers to the automation of manual processes and the subsequent optimization of those processes. The goal of management is to improve the flow of business processes such that efficiencies are improved, risks are lessened and costs are lower. Components of the Microsoft Business Process Management Solutions include...

Business Process Management
Tools and technologies to manage business processes that span applications and organizational boundaries.

Application Integration
Internal application integration within an enterprise using either standard or proprietary communication protocols

Business-to-Business Integration
External integration with trading partners, customers or suppliers using either standard or proprietary communication protocols

Q5: Why should we choose a Microsoft business process management solution?

Microsoft BizTalk Server offers great economics in business process management technologies, enabling midsize companies to install, configure and customize their BPM solution easily and affordably. Developers who are familiar with Microsoft tools will quickly become productive. And by using a common set of reusable services, organizations can reduce the costs and time to value of business process automation, while at the same time simplifying management and maintenance costs. In addition, by using BizTalk Server to provide BPM within your organization and between your trading partners, you also benefit from the long list of partners that have helped to make Microsoft's solution one of the most versatile in the industry. Thousands of systems and devices are supported on the Microsoft platform, as well as over 2500 applications. Microsoft's strong relationships with leading global and regional systems integrators has allowed us to deliver tailored solutions for every industry in every geography

Q6: What is an ESB and how can Microsoft help me?

The term Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is widely used in the context of implementing the messaging capabilities of a service oriented infrastructure. An ESB is one of many building blocks that make up a comprehensive service oriented infrastructure. The messaging capabilities required in a service oriented infrastructure extend the functions of traditional Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) and Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) to include first class support for Web Service standards and integration with other service infrastructure components such as policy management, metadata registry, and operational and business monitoring frameworks. Given the heterogeneous nature of most enterprise infrastructures and the significant investments already made in EAI and MOM assets, it is also important that your ESB enhance your ability to leverage those existing assets in a service oriented world.

Microsoft provides a comprehensive ESB Toolkit that is built on top of BizTalk Server 2009. The Microsoft Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) Toolkit extends the capabilities of Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009 to support a loosely coupled messaging architecture. BizTalk Server includes a powerful publish/subscribe mechanism that works by creating and filling subscriptions. The ESB Toolkit provides an infrastructure that enables the flexible and secure reuse of infrastructure and business services and the ability to orchestrate existing services into new end-to-end business processes. At the core of this solution is BizTalk Server 2009 which provides a basis for common ESB capabilities including:

1) Industry Leading Web Services Support
2) Metadata Lookup
3) Intelligent Routing
4) Exception Management
5) Message Transformation
6) Distributed Deployment
7) Itinerary Processing
8) Centralized Management
9) Legacy and LOB Application Adaptation
10) Business Rule Engine
11) Service Orchestration
12) Business Activity Monitoring

Q7: Why should I bet on MS for my SOA/ESB solution?

Microsoft helps customers to achieve goals in a fraction of the time at a fraction of the cost of our nearest competitor.
Microsoft is empowering people to bridge the world of structured and unstructured processes. The question is often asked – what do you get after you have an SOA? The rubber meets the road when you have consumption of the services – with our innovations in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, .NET Framework and BizTalk Server; Microsoft is poised to empower the masses to bridge the transactional and the collaborative capabilities, empowering people to drive business success. Microsoft’s “real-world” approach to SOA was initiated more than seven years ago with the introduction of the .NET platform that continues to set the industry bar as the first native Web services-based platform built from the ground up. Further, the platform goes beyond service orientation to address capabilities such as federated data, identity and access, and integrated user experience across diverse applications

Q8: What is RFID and what specific functionality will be supported with BizTalk RFID?

RFID stands for radio frequency identification. At a simple level, it is a technology that involves tags that emit radio signals and devices called readers that pick up the signal.

BizTalk RFID is a robust and extensible set of capabilities with open APIs and tools to cost effectively build vertical asset tracking / supply chain visibility solutions and configure intelligent RFID-driven processes. BizTalk RFID will include rich data, device and event management. In the BizTalk RFID platform, Microsoft is focused on delivering:

Device abstraction and management capabilities to help customers manage and monitor devices in a uniform manner. This plug and play architecture allows customers to leverage the investments in standard or non-standard devices by providing a uniform way of managing their device infrastructure.

An event processing engine that allows customers to create business rules and manage the choreography of event pipelines for RFID events. The event processing engine will enable enterprises to integrate RFID events into the business process server and provide real time visibility at the edge by virtue of it's flexible architecture.

Tight integration with Visual Studio and open APIs that enables developers to quickly integrate RFID events with existing business applications or create their own custom solutions.

Support for industry standards and an extensible architecture with advanced deployment and monitoring tools that IT professionals can use to meet service level commitments and reduce long term costs.

Q9: How does BizTalk Server integrate with the Microsoft Office system?

There are several different ways the Microsoft Office system uses the BizTalk Adapter Pack to connect to and surface data from line of business applications directly to end-users. In scenarios that include the automation of business processes spanning multiple back-end systems or trading partners, BizTalk Server provides customers with tools for the design, management, and monitoring of those processes through tight integration with Visio, Excel, SharePoint, InfoPath and PerformancePoint Services.

Q10: How does BizTalk Server work with Office System products like SharePoint and InfoPath?

In combination with InfoPath, developers can design structured workflows including form-based information. BizTalk Server has native support for InfoPath enabling users to:

1) Submit InfoPath documents to BizTalk Server through Web Services.
2) Submit and receive InfoPath documents through SharePoint Form Libraries.
3) Manipulate the InfoPath form contents to create new forms.
4) Update information in an existing form within BizTalk Server.
5) BizTalk also provide integration with custom workflow in SharePoint through Windows Communication Framework (WCF). Using WCF, human processed hosted in SharePoint and implemented in Windows Workflow (WF) to invoke BizTalk services to provides backend integration and system workflows.
6) With BizTalk Server 2009, customers can tap into SharePoint Portal Server to share BAM reports, manage trading partner relationships, and enhance human-based workflow capabilities within specific business process automation scenarios.

Q11: What are the BizTalk Server adapters, and how do they help customers do business?

BizTalk Server adapters provide customers with native connectivity to key applications and transport protocols. These adapters require no code to connect BizTalk Server to these key applications, such as SAP, Siebel, Oracle eBusiness Suite and Peoplesoft, and key protocols. Customers use these adapters to connect these applications and automate processes that may span applications or organizational boundaries.