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BizTalk: Enabling Software to Speak the Language of Business
"To get more than a million new businesses into e-commerce, we need to help their software speak the language of business in a consistent way." -- Bill Gates, CEO, Microsoft
Executive SummaryMicrosoft® BizTalk is a framework based on new Extensible Markup Language (XML) schemas and industry standards for sharing information. It will enable businesses to integrate their systems and processes by freeing business data from application infrastructure. This data-focused approach will allow businesses to easily interchange BizTalk documents with online trading partners regardless of the platform, operating system or underlying technology of their existing systems. Examples of BizTalk documents include product catalogs, purchase orders, and product and promotional information. Microsoft will work collaboratively with customers, partners and industry consortia to define BizTalk schema and to accelerate the adoption of industry standards. The company also will incorporate BizTalk schema into the Microsoft® commerce platform, the Microsoft Network (MSN™) shopping services and future versions of Office, BackOffice®, and Windows® products. The remainder of this document describes BizTalk at a high level and highlights the advantages of adopting BizTalk as part of a long-term business strategy.
IntroductionBizTalk is a framework that improves the efficiencies of business processes by enabling different systems to communicate more easily. Today, obstacles to interoperation are slowing the adoption of e-commerce, and are consuming time that could be spent improving business processes to stimulate revenue growth and cost reduction instead of maintaining basic business infrastructure. It is unrealistic to rely on or require businesses to rebuild their systems from scratch in a uniform manner across the supply chain in order to take advantage of e-commerce. BizTalk enables software to speak the language of business by working around the obstacles of interoperation such as different operating systems, different languages and different applications infrastructure both within an organization and between trading partners. There are three primary ways BizTalk will improve business success with e-commerce:
It is estimated that 30% - 70% of the cost of implementing an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system involves the work required to integrate with existing business systems and processes within an organization. BizTalk, with its use of XML as the underlying technology base, simplifies this process. EDI is used today by companies for automating transactions with trading partners, such as purchase orders, invoices, advanced ship notices and the like. However, EDI is expensive and relatively complex, and so has been limited to larger businesses and their partners. With e-commerce and BizTalk, this automation can be extended to all trading partners and can be taken to a deeper level by integrating business planning processes and even responses to unplanned activity. Businesses can supplement their existing EDI infrastructure with BizTalk and begin to share design information, respond to sales spikes or stock outages more quickly and build deeper trading relationships with partners of all sizes.
In physical markets, consumers have access to sales support staff to answer questions and they can use all five senses to help make their buying decisions. In online marketplaces, there is a need for richer information and a better experience for consumers. By incorporating standards for describing business, product and promotions information, BizTalk makes it easy for businesses to publish their products and offers to online marketplaces and reach consumers with the appropriate information when they’re ready to buy. In short, BizTalk enables the following: The BizTalk framework relies on industry standards and Microsoft’s work with our own products and initiatives with industry partners, standards bodies and customers will help accelerate the adoption of these standards and the adoption of e-commerce. A Common ChallengeUp until now it has been incredibly difficult for companies to easily conduct business over the Internet due to the lack of a single technical vocabulary for describing business data and processes. This challenge exists both across and within industries because no two businesses use the same applications in exactly the same way. Whether the differences stem from diverse operating systems or software created by different companies, getting different applications to "talk" to each other clearly is a significant technical challenge. Longer-term difficulties can arise when these information exchanges become too complex, fragile, or burdensome. Shared database design was a popular approach used by many businesses several years ago. Its promise for straightforward and simple information exchange depended on all applications sharing low-level definitions for information common to all businesses. This approach fell short because no two database designers think exactly alike, and the resulting database structures lacked the flexibility to change to meet new business challenges. More recently, many businesses have taken an approach to solving application integration that depends on object models. Unfortunately this approach has shortcomings, as well:
A universal programming language will not solve the application interoperability problem either. Like the object model approach, it does not eliminate the need for each set of partners to negotiate its own set of integration-specific protocols. The universal language model also requires every business system to be rewritten or later redeveloped when yet another universal language gains favor.
How BizTalk Can Help…The explosive growth in use of the Internet to conduct business online has further heightened the need to address the challenges described above. Businesses must be able to use their existing systems to find customers and partners on the Internet, to sell them goods, and to establish longer-term trading relationships. BizTalk simplifies the application integration businesses need to do business on the Internet by assuming that application services and data are loosely coupled – that is, they are distinct and separate. This assumption allows BizTalk systems to focus on data interchange instead of infrastructure compatibility. The basis for BizTalk data interchanges is XML-based vocabulary describing business process information. These description, or schema, can be based on existing industry standards, such as those for corporate purchasing product information, traditional data forms like EDI, or on emerging descriptions for product catalogs, offers, promotional campaigns, and other data. BizTalk schema provide a common ground for businesses and partners to share information and engage in e-commerce in meaningful ways. Any businesses that use forms of any sort already has schema supporting business processes. To communicate with other businesses, the data in these existing schema (say an inventory form) may need to be mapped to another schema (such as a shipping form). For information systems, this data transformation is much simpler and easier to implement than the models for process integration described above. After receiving a BizTalk document, a business will need to act on the information it contains. Many industry standards not only describe data, but also describe how data should be handled. BizTalk supports these standards by providing a framework for describing data handling rules. Businesses implement these handling systems locally, which greatly reduces testing requirements. Business integration models that share logic along with data require significantly greater development and testing for each trading relationship. Thus, BizTalk’s vocabulary and loosely coupled communications are highly complementary. The former provides easier data interchange and the latter eases business process integration. Together, they enable software to speak the language of business in a consistent way.
Microsoft BizTalk StrategyBizTalk Framework InitiativesMicrosoft is investing in a broad strategy that will result in a strong set of products and services that implement the BizTalk framework. BizTalk itself is an extension to our existing Windows Distributed interNet Applications (DNA) architecture that helps businesses integrate applications. We are supporting the BizTalk framework through a series of product and collaborative initiatives with partners, customers and industry consortia. Our initial focus is on five core initiatives to support the BizTalk framework for e-commerce and application integration. These are:
BizTalk ExamplesLet’s take a look at some fictitious examples that illustrate the benefits of using BizTalk enabled applications. We’ll examine some trading situations between business systems that work within and across different industries. Duluth Mutual Life establishes a company supplierDuluth Mutual Life Company is a major insurer whose agents operate on a highly autonomous basis. Employee self-service is a top priority for Duluth’s business processes. Megan, a purchasing agent for Duluth has been tasked to find a suitable camera for Duluth’s claims adjusters to use in the field and to make that camera available on Duluth’s intranet-based corporate purchasing system. Megan has selected a Digital Camera from Fabrikam, Inc., a supplier of high-quality, high-resolution digital cameras. Fabrikam has decided to accelerate corporate sales by providing online access to their ordering systems to business customers. Because Fabrikam has adopted the BizTalk manufacturing schema as their standard way to exchange purchase order, pricing and inventory information with their trading partners, they have instantly increased their access to a large customer base that also uses the BizTalk framework. Because Duluth is one of those BizTalk customers, Megan can easily integrate Fabrikam’s product information into Duluth’s PeopleSoft Business Network (PSBN) corporate purchasing system. Fabrikam uses BizTalk documents to publish and update their latest product information in Duluth’s purchasing system. PSBN is also able to accurately reflect Fabrikam’s digital camera availability, so adjusters aren’t held up by delays in camera fulfillment. The end result is improved employee self-service and more integrated, efficient business process. When a Duluth claims adjuster needs a new camera, she accesses PSBN, selects the camera and submits her order. PSBN submits a BizTalk purchase order to Fabrikam’s online order processing system.
West Coast Sales reaches qualified customersWest Coast Sales is a consumer electronic reseller that has recently launched an online retail site to complement its mail order and brick and mortar distribution channels. To broaden the reach of its product and promotional offers, West Coast Sales participates in MSN. West Coast Sales subscribes to MSN by providing them BizTalk-based product, promotional, and company information. Ken is an online consumer looking for a cool gift for his son’s birthday, which is two months away. His son is interested in computers ad photography, so Ken thinks a digital camera might be a nice present. MSN presents a Buyer’s Guide that uses BizTalk-derived information to enable shoppers like Ken to directly compare a wide set of features across a similar set of products. BizTalk has helped Ken’s shopping experience by reducing the number of web sites he has to visit to get complete product information. It has also helped suppliers by increasing the probability that any single shopper will be exposed to their products and promotions. After thorough research, Ken decides he likes the Fabrikam digital camera. Unfortunately, the camera costs too much money. Because the birthday is still several weeks away, Ken signs up on the MSN Market Monitor to be notified of any changes in Fabrikam digital camera information. Fortunately for Ken, the BizTalk schema supports promotional information. A few weeks later, West Coast Sales decides to bundle expanded memory cards with its digital cameras, and notifies MSN of the promotions using BizTalk documents. MSN, in turn, notifies Ken via e-mail. Attracted by the camera’s enhanced capabilities, Ken decides the camera is worth the existing price. Directly from the e-mail, he visits the West Coast Sales web site and buys his son a new digital camera with lots of memory. In this entire sales cycle, both consumer and supplier benefit from BizTalk. The BizTalk schema has increased consumer ability to find products, to compare them, and to stay abreast of updates to product information. Suppliers are given a more reliable way of reaching customers and maintaining a relationship with them.
SummaryBizTalk will provide a framework for combining information from different systems and processes into a unified business process. The benefits derived are a result of truly aligning technology with the language of business in a consistent way. This is accomplished through the BizTalk framework that consists of the following distinct layers:
We will be investing in a broad strategy around the BizTalk framework that encompasses:
In support of this broad strategy, we will host a design review of new BizTalk schema with customers, standards bodies and industry vendors in the second half of 1999. The design review will be an open forum for providing input on the BizTalk framework and will result in the publishing of all BizTalk protocols. BizTalk documents, message handling protocols and service descriptions will be maintained on the Microsoft web site as a public resource.
The information contained in this document represents the current view of Microsoft Corp. on the issues discussed as of the date of publication. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information presented after the date of publication. This document is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS DOCUMENT. The example companies, organizations, products, people and events depicted herein are fictitious. No association with any real company, organization, product, person or event is intended or should be inferred. © 1999 Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved. Microsoft, MSN, BackOffice, Windows, ActiveStore and ActiveX are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries. Other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
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