BizTalk BPO horizons expand

Microsoft’s BPO (business process orchestration) technology has so far remained separate from its Windows operating system, but integration of the two is on the horizon.

A Microsoft official at the company’s TechEd show in Dallas last week said BizTalk will expand to facilitate this move, one of many server-related announcements made at the show.

Touted as the first component of its Jupiter e-business system, the Redmond, Wash.-based company announced beta availability of BizTalk Server 2004, which features BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) support, “human-based workflow” for modeling workflow after user needs, and single sign-on capabilities. General availability of BizTalk Server 2004 is planned for the end of this year.

Jupiter, due in 2005, will combine capabilities of Microsoft’s BizTalk Server, Commerce Server, and Content Management Server products.

Microsoft’s BizTalk Server application integration software currently serves as a repository for the company’s business process orchestration technologies. The BPEL specification, for orchestrating interactions among Web services and providing a common workflow language, will be supported in BizTalk Server later this year, for example.

Eventually, technologies such as the orchestration engine in BizTalk Server or BPEL could find their way into Windows, said Dave Wascha, group product manager for e-business servers at Microsoft.

“We have no plans to add that [to Windows] today,” Wascha said. “It certainly makes sense to see that happening over time. But that’s several years away.”

Embedding orchestration capabilities into the operating system would be consistent with Microsoft’s stance that its OS has all the capabilities of an application server for running Internet-based applications.

This is unlike vendors in the Java camp, such as IBM, Sun Microsystems, and BEA Systems. They maintain application servers separate from the operating system. 

“For anything serious, people want these workflows to be on a server so they can be accessed from anywhere by anyone who wants to use them,” said analyst Rob Helm, director of research at Directions on Microsoft, an independent research firm in Kirkland, Wash.

Users need workflow capabilities for functions such as connecting order systems and purchasing systems, and requiring BizTalk Server for this can be an expensive proposition, he said.

Meanwhile, Microsoft at TechEd set delivery of its Yukon database for the second half of 2004 instead of the first half of next year.

Microsoft also announced that SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services is expected to ship by the end of this year, with a public beta due this fall.

It also announced the Whidbey version of the Visual Studio development tool is planned for release this year or in 2004, with a follow-up version of Visual Studio, code-named Orcas, expected in 2005. Orcas is expected to leverage Longhorn, the successor to the Windows XP OS planned for 2005.