What Is BizTalk?

Microsoft® BizTalk™ is a platform neutral e-commerce framework that makes it easy for businesses to integrate applications and conduct business over the Internet with trading partners and customers. The BizTalk framework is based on Extensible Markup Language (XML) schemas and industry standards that enable integration across industries and between business systems, regardless of platform, operating system or underlying technology. Specifically it is composed of three things: schema, products, and services.

1. Schema. BizTalk schema will be based on industry standards such as electronic data interchange (EDI), borrow from object-based industry initiatives such as the Open Application Group (OAG) in manufacturing, and will be defined in concert with ISVs, customers and industry consortia. As new XML standards emerge, contributors to the BizTalk framework will evaluate and support standards that deliver value to customers. There will inevitably be numerous schema available, with the market deciding which schema are most appropriate for particular scenarios. The BizTalk framework will allow some consistency between how these schema are defined and will facilitate translation between them and the easier use of multiple schema from different sources.
   
   
2. Products. The BizTalk framework will be supported natively in Microsoft products and tools. One specific product, Microsoft BizTalk Server, will make it easier for companies to take advantage of BizTalk. Scheduled for beta release in mid-1999, this server product will enable companies to exchange data and integrate applications over the Internet and will support BizTalk schemas as well as traditional trading approaches, such as EDI. The server extends Microsoft's Commerce Interchange Pipeline features, found in Site Server Commerce Edition 3.0, with scalable and reliable interchange and data transformation capabilities in addition to enhanced trading partner management tools. The remaining parts of the Microsoft E-Commerce Platform, Office, BackOffice™ and Windows® will use BizTalk XML schemas to store additional information about documents and to integrate BackOffice- and Windows-based applications. The next major release of the Microsoft productivity suite, Microsoft Office 2000, elevates HTML to a companion file format and uses XML to store additional document information. The next version of Microsoft SQL Server™ will incorporate native support of BizTalk through its ability to read, write and store XML documents, as well as offer full integration with SQL Server Data Transformation Services. We also expect many other companies to support BizTalk by either natively building BizTalk capability into their products, or by building on the infrastructure provided by BizTalk server (see Partners for more information).
   
   
3. Services. BizTalk will become the product, service and promotions content framework for supporting the evolution of MSN as a site that brings consumers and businesses together. BizTalk will include rich support for document formats that make it easy for manufacturers and merchants to increase their customer segment presence by promoting business, product and promotional information directly to MSN and other consumer sites on the Web. Other services like mySAP portal have announced support of BizTalk as well.

How can I get started with BizTalk?

Transcript of Bill Gates' Speech Introducing BizTalk (from March 4, 1999)