News

BizTalk Server Ready to Go

• By Scott Bekker
• 12/13/2000

The purpose of BizTalk is to unify various programs and services and Web-enable them, allowing companies to move their businesses online quickly.

"The real value of Web-enabling an enterprise only comes when every application within the value chain, both inside and out, is orchestrated into a single solution," Steve Garone, an IDC analyst, was quoted as saying in a Microsoft press release. “The BizTalk Enterprise and Standard editions will help empower customers of all sizes to integrate and orchestrate throughout the digital economy."

There are two versions of BizTalk Server 2000 being released. For large corporations, there is the enterprise edition, which supports multiple processors and a clustered server environment, and will run $24,999 per processor. The standard version, without multiple processor support and unable to run across a cluster, will cost $4,999 per CPU.

BizTalk Server, like all the new .NET servers, leverages XML as its core technology. One of BizTalk’s main selling points is its ability to help companies shave weeks or months off the time needed to get its products or services online. John Wall, CTO of HealthAxis.com, one of the 50 customers already using BizTalk in their operations, states in the press release how the product has helped streamline production.

"To fulfill customer requests, we used BizTalk Server 2000 to integrate up to nine back-end legacy and mainframe systems as well as integrate with all of our insurance providers,” Wall was quoted as saying. “In our first project alone, BizTalk helped us reduce one of our applications from 5,000 lines of code to 100. You just can't put a price tag on that kind of efficiency."

BizTalk Server 2000 should be available for purchase sometime next month. - Keith Ward