BizTalk Server 2009 Beta Available

With the introduction of BizTalk Server 2009 Beta along with BizTalk RFID Mobile and the BizTalk RFID Standards Pack, Microsoft takes its vision of end-to-end enterprise connectivity a step forward. With the new innovations made available for the BizTalk Server product family, the Redmond company is applauding boosted efficiency when it comes down to bridging together enterprise applications.

“Our customers are looking for additional ways to extend and connect their existing applications, and to deliver new projects more rapidly,” explained Oliver Sharp, general manager of the Connected Systems Division at Microsoft. “The BizTalk product family delivers a tremendous set of enterprise connectivity capabilities 'in the box' for heterogeneous environments, at a fraction of the price of any comparable solution in the market today.”

The Gartner Application Architecture, Development and Integration Summit was the stage where Microsoft announced the evolution of BizTalk Server. In this context, the bits for BizTalk Server 2009 Beta, the first public taste of the solution, went live via Microsoft Connect. With support for Windows Server 2008, Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 SP1, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1, BizTalk Server 2009 Beta is, even at this development milestone, feature-complete, according to the Redmond giant.

Furthermore, since the solution is praised for its integration capabilities in heterogeneous environments, BizTalk Server 2009 Beta is set up to play nice with Oracle Corp.’s E-Business Suite, but also with the latest iterations of IBM Corp.’s Customer Information Control System (CICS), Information Management System (IMS), DB2, DB2/400, DB2 Universal Database and WebSphere MQ.

In addition to the BizTalk Server 2009 Beta, the software giant is offering BizTalk RFID Mobile at no extra cost to BizTalk Server customers, via Microsoft Software Assurance. Already available, BizTalk RFID Mobile connects devices running Windows Mobile and Windows CE with BizTalk Server RFID.