As is its custom with many products, Microsoft said on September 5, 2008 that the next release of BizTalk Server is about 18 months away and then it talked a lot about the unnamed, untimed release after that.
Speaking of names, the next release of BizTalk is moved from being a point release (V3) to a full bore event. But the feature list, the means by which the news was released to the public make it appear that it doesn't quite deserve that full-bore designation. BizTalk was first called 2000 with major releases following that were named 2002, 2004 and 2006. So Microsoft should have had something new ready this year.
But whatever the year designation, the next release will include:
"a new UDDI v3-compliant services registry, new and enhanced LOB adapters (Oracle E-Business Suite, SQL Server), enhanced host systems integration (updates to MQ, CICS, IMS, CICS), a new Mobile RFID platform and management tools, enhanced B2B capabilities (updates to EDI, AS2, SWIFT), enhanced developer and team productivity through ALM integration with Team Foundation System and Visual Studio,...
It will also include more Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) Guidance, which--as its name suggests--are patterns and practices (not actual product) to use BizTalk in:
applications that incorporate itinerary-based service invocation for lightweight service composition, dynamic resolution of endpoints and maps, Web service and WS-* integration, fault management and reporting, and integration with third-party SOA governance solutions.
That sounds a lot like "we're still not an SOA product but we'll show you how to emulate it." I don't mean to say you have to an ESB to have SOA but you don't need an ESB to do all those other things listed either.
I am guessing that Microsoft has seen or commissioned some market research that shows that, at least among its target customers, supporting features such as mobile RFID is more important than being academically pure SOA. And apparently getting there is worth even changing the name sequence from even years to odd years.
What's this all have to do with business process management (BPM)? More on the future roadmap for BizTalk in an upcoming post.
-- Dennis Byron
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