As many of you probably know by now, Microsoft has announced the next release in the BizTalk Family. This will be called BizTalk Server 2006 R3.
I for one am excited for this release! Not so much for the new adapters and added features that will be available, but more by what this represents.
Microsoft and the Connection Systems Division are actively working on Oslo (the next generation of model drive design – all in all super cool stuff) so for them to announce a new BizTalk Release before the Oslo release really shows the level of dedication Microsoft has, not only to the product but to the customers currently using it worldwide.
I keep thinking back to 2005 to the days when Windows Workflow and Windows Communication Foundation were first announced and reading blog posts saying “BizTalk is Dead”. Here we are three years later and BizTalk is even stronger than ever!
With the upcoming BizTalk R3 release and the not-so-distant Oslo Platform release, I can only imagine where BizTalk will be a few years from now.
Thomas,
That sounds good, i’m a biztalk developer and i worked 2004/06/06R2 versions, and after hearing from you that R3 is ready ,i’m still more exicited. An looing forward for Oslo.
thanks for Update
i have been to teched.
and i heard from product team that, R3 supports only SQL 2008.
why is it so? are we trying to sell cloud services, where we made huge investment. or we want to standardize the product?
and after being to teched, I clearly see that BizTalk brand name is not going way. but biztalk is going way (xlang(orchestrations), BRE and I think even BAM (with work flow monitor, changing rules from sharepoint portal etc)
so, i think its going away as a product..but remain as a brand name.
but it might take months-years!
anyways, i can clearly sense that WCF/WF is the future of developing service oriented implantations from Microsoft
I have not heard about BizTalk 2006 R3 and SQL 2008. But I%u2019m sure they have a good reason if that is the case. I would guess it%u2019s for forward support of Oslo relates technologies.
I wouldn%u2019t say BizTalk is going away. But as you point out it seems that some pieces of what we think of as BizTalk today will no longer be main stream. But I think we%u2019ll have new, better tool available that at the end of the day we%u2019ll be happy with.
I would never stop recommending BizTalk for Enterprise Clients at this point and would encourage investment in new Orchestrations.
When it all comes down to it, BizTalk as we know is now does a lot of things well. Oslo will just be filling in the gaps we have to have workaround today.