In a recent post, I talked about the upcoming release of Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009, details of which were released September 5, 2008. The business process management (BPM) news angle to this announcement was more notable for the future roadmap that was released at the same time than for the product itself. By the way, to some extent the BizTalk Server 2009 product timing delay I discussed in the previous post is linked to delays (at least perceived delays) in Windows Server, HyperV, new Microsoft fail-over technology and so forth as much as it is to issues within the Microsoft Connected Server division.
After 2009, presumably in 2011 if the old timing is followed or in 2012 if the 2006-2009 timing is the new norm, Microsoft is looking at developer productivity enhancements (e.g. complex mapping); more B2B support (e.g. in trading partner management, expanded industry standards and schemas); low-latency messaging improvement and more ESB guidance (see earlier post vis a vis SOA for why more is in bold); more support for cross-enterprise asset tracking; real-time business event visibility through business intelligence and business alerts; and integration with whatever the latest new Microsoft platform capabilities are at the time (e.g., to take advantage of advances in the .NET Framework, Visual Studio, and Windows Server).
In addition the timing of the next major BizTalk release will be somewhat gated to the Oslo modeling platform.
Microsoft claims in the September 5, 2008 announcement and similar BizTalk press activity to be a leader in the "enterprise connectivity space" and says BizTalk is about enabling BPM. Based on its statistics, it is way behind IBM. Oracle, Software Ag, Sun, Tibco and others in vanilla connectivity. But I do recognize them as a leader in BPM because I believe BPM is a big tent including everyone from Autonomy to, with a stretch, Yahoo Zimbra (just so I could complete the alphabet).
However there are different degrees of BPM as looked at as a spectrum from workflow to straight-through processing (STP) on one axis and Intranet to extranet to Internet on another axis. Enterprise application integration (EAI) products are in the BPM tent primarily because of their Extranet/STP strengths. Microsoft BizTalk appears headed to simply being the best damn EAI product out there long after no one but Microsoft users cares about EAI. (Of course that's not totally a bad strategy since Microsoft users are half the universe and because they tend to be smaller enterprises and slower to adopt EAI.).
As for BPM, it looks like Microsoft is putting the brakes on BizTalk. The BI/BAM enhancements under consideration will be an ingredient in Microsoft beginning to deliver the full breadth of BPM as described in this recent post where Lombardi's Phil Gilbert suggested a definition of BPM. The real impediment to Microsoft becoming a full BPM supplier however is its hesitancy to fully incorporate Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) into BizTalk. It says this is because of customer prioritization but I am guessing there is either a marketing or technical reason.
-- Dennis Byron
I have to wonder how the two "camps" at Microsoft (the BizTalk camp and the WWF camp) view one another. While I can see how it could be unhealthy and inefficient for one product to cannibalize the other, I am perplexed not to see the marketing efforts of the two camps take BizTalk and WWF into two distinct paths. By failing to promote the products distinctly, I would have to believe the Microsoft-centric customer (the one who staffs .NET developers and chooses to build everything internally) is becoming more confused regarding which technology to base their own solutions upon (and which camp has the best road map for a companies' future needs).