This presentation has hosted by Bala Sriram and Rajesh Ramamirtham
Blog Update: I have added a conclusion where I have provided a summary and some of my thoughts on this release. Also, this session has now been posted so feel free to take a look at it here. You can also add any comments that you have regarding this session at the bottom of this post.
Key takeaway from Bala: We are innovating in BizTalk!
General Update
- BizTalk Server “R2” release will be available around 6 months after Windows 8
- CTP expect this summer
- Commitment to releasing server for years to come. Publicly indicating there will be at least another release beyond “R2”
- 12k+ BizTalk customers
- 81% of Fortune Global 100 use BizTalk
- 79% of customers are using BizTalk 2010
- CU delivered every quarter with product enhancements
- Best NSAT in the industry
- 6 of 8 largest US Pharmaceutical Companies use BizTalk
- Continue to bet on BizTalk – We will take your investments forward!
- Enabling new Azure based BizTalk scenarios for EAI & EDI
- Bringing together BizTalk on-premises and in Azure
What customers are telling us?
- Keep me current with platform, standards and LOB changes
- Reduce time and cost of developing of Integration solutions
- Let me focus on business challenges, not technology infrastructure
- Cloud advantages
- Cost-effective, scalable infrastructure for easy deployment
- Some scenarios like b2b are amenable to cloud
- Cloud Challenges
- Data privacy, isolation , control more integration
- LOB assets will continue to be on-premise
- Phased cloud adoption on my terms
- One size does not fit all
How BizTalk will meet these requirements?
- Upgrade to latest MS platform
- Improved reach for B2B customers
- Better performance and manageability
- BizTalk on Azure IaaS
- Eliminate HW procurement lead times
- Reduce time and cost to setup and maintain BizTalk environments
- BizTalk on Azure PaaS for EAI and EDI
- Reduce partner onboarding and management cost
- Leverage existing BizTalk artifacts
- Rapid configuration-driven development for common integration patterns
- All of these working together seamlessly as one BizTalk
- Trying to work under “one umbrella” but no naming can be implied at this time
BizTalk Server On-Premise Update
- Platform Update
- Support for:
- VS 2012,
- Window 8 Server
- SQL Server 2012
- Office 15
- System Center 2012
- Support for:
- B2B enhancements:
- EDI
- HL7 2.5.1, 2.6
- SWIFT 2012 Message Pack
- Better Performance
- In Order Delivery process
- Serialization created delays
- Improved dynamic send ports and ESB via host handler association of Send ports
- Can configure a dynamic send port host handler in Admin Console
- MLLP adapter performance
- HIS DB2 client transaction load balancing, client bulk insert (15 times faster)
- In Order Delivery process
- Better manageability
- Visualize BizTalk artifact dependencies in BizTalk admin console
- ESB toolkit as core part of BizTalk setup and product
- HIS Administration using Config files with application metadata stored in XML
- Improved connectivity
- Consume REST Services directly in BizTalk
- WebHttpBinding will be used when calling REST Services
- ACS support
- Simplified SharePoint integration experience
- No more adapter web service installs on SharePoint
- Improvements to existing adapters (HIS, SMTP)
- improved macros
- Easy connectivity to Service Bus Relay, Queues and Topics
- CICS http client connectivity to Windows
- Consume REST Services directly in BizTalk
BizTalk running in Azure (IaaS)
Use case :
- First step in the cloud adoption
- Eliminate hardware procurement lead times
- Reduce time and cost to setup and maintain BizTalk environments
- Move applications from on premise and back
- Create a virtual network in Azure and enable connectivity to on-premise network
- User logs into Azure Portal
- User creates a new VM and selects BizTalk stock image
- User specifics BizTalk environment topology and adds them to existing virtual network
- New VMs are provisioned for user in Azure IaaS
- User logs into the provisioned VM which has BizTalk installed and configured and starts using it.
- First step in the cloud adoption
- Targeting same Windows 8 timeframe
- Microsoft will provide guidance on performance
- MSDTC support in Azure?
- It is supported now in IaaS and was brought in to support BizTalk
- All features that work on premise will work in IaaS
Goals
- Seamlessly connect with Azure artifacts
- Enable hybrid applications that span Azure and on-premises
- Expose LOB services both on Premise and to the cloud
Conclusion
Wow…that was a lot of content in a short 1:15 h session. There was actually more information released related to EDI support in the EDI Services (PaaS) but I just couldn’t keep up between writing this blog and tweeting with the European BizTalk community.
What I liked:
- REST support event if it is only Send
- Cleaner integration with SharePoint. A similar statement was made with BizTalk 2010 but talking with the product team members after the presentation I know that this is not lip service. The Adapter Web Service is gone. No more installs on SharePoint servers. Also, no more consuming SharePoint’s legacy “Lists.asmx” web services. Yay!
- Ordered Delivery performance. It will be nice to have some improved performance while maintaining sequential integrity.
- First class ACS support in selected “cloud enabled” Adapters
- BrokeredMessage property/BizTalk Context property support
- BizTalk IaaS – should open new capabilities
- I can see the symmetry between on-premises and PaaS starting to materialize
What I would love to see:
- Exposing REST end points
- Single Mapper/Transformation experience between On-Premises and PaaS offering
- Support for other sterilizers than XML (JSON, C#) - stay tuned?
- Service Bus Connect – Receiving requests from LOB systems (SAP IDOCS)
Overall the tone was extremely encouraging. Personally, I haven’t seen this much innovation come from the BizTalk team since BizTalk 2006 R2 when support WCF/WCF LOB adapters was introduced. Yep..I said it. The next release of BizTalk is no longer “just a platform update” . In my opinion, this is a full release and should be named accordingly. For those that think BizTalk is dead – better think again. The operation was successful and the patient is still alive.
