BizTalk To The Rescue?

If your application vendor was acquired by Oracle last year, then there's a good chance Microsoft is trying to make it easier for you to use BizTalk Server as your integration software.

Some PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, and Siebel Systems customers may be losing patience waiting for Oracle to come out with its new Fusion line of applications that will work with Fusion middleware. Just in case, Microsoft plans to be ready with an integration software option.

By midyear, Microsoft plans to have nine adapters that will connect the next version of BizTalk Server to JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, and Siebel apps, Michael Woods, senior technical product manager, said at the Visual Studio Live Conference late last month. Included in the nine will be adapters for Oracle Application Suite and Tibco Software's Rendezvous and Enterprise Message Service messaging middleware.

"We have greatly expanded the adapter library. Our adapters speak directly to those applications," Woods noted. The adapters will be included in BizTalk's price.

BizTalk Server also will give users a better view of the business processes running in those applications. It will help answer the questions, "How do I manage processes in an intelligent way? How is my business performing?" he said.BizTalk Server 2004, the current version, already connects to SAP applications. Microsoft has come out with a new version of BizTalk roughly every two years and is on its fourth version.

BizTalk Server 2006 will add a business-activity monitoring portal, technical product manager Kris Horrocks says. Business-activity monitoring was introduced in BizTalk Server in 2004, but the display of business activities consisted of entries in an Excel spreadsheet. Horrocks says BizTalk 2006 will display the progress of underlying business processes in charts and trend lines on the portal.