There comes a point in every viable product's life cycle when the stage is set for its debut. The design meetings are memories, the documentation's complete, construction is over, the beta is done, the product's been stabilized, and it's time to push it out into the world. That time has come for BizTalk Server 2004.

I've been in this space a long time. I vaguely remember the initial references back in 1999 to a new product called BizTalk, and a conversation with a co-worker where I said "This is hot; I'm going to watch this one." I got actively involved in the days of the BizTalk Jumpstart Kit, and have been through the BizTalk 2000 and 2002 releases. In short, I've been on this bandwagon since we started looking for planks to build the bandwagon with. It's been a fun ride, and it looks like we're about to strap a jet engine onto the bandwagon.

I've been closely involved with BizTalk Server 2004 during the development phase, and this time they really got it right. BizTalk Server 2004 is a complete rewrite. If you used prior versions of the product, the core concepts are the same, but everything else has changed. Think of BizTalk Server 2004 as a core engine with lots of surfaces - for lots of different intended audiences. There's something for everyone, from business analysts to developers and operations people.

BizTalk Server 2004 represents a tremendous investment by Microsoft. At its peak, the product team consisted of 300 people. The code base, at 1.5 million lines of C# code, represents the largest .NET Framework application shipped by Microsoft, and may in fact be the largest C# code base in the world.

The Services-Oriented Mantra
The software industry seems to have an inherent need to reinvent itself every couple of years, perpetually introducing the "Next Big Thing." Such revolutions have always occurred, some notable ones being object-oriented programming, XML, and of course the Internet itself. Some have more impact than others. Web services arrived riding a tumultuous wave of hype, yet most of the really interesting work was being done behind firewalls, as the building blocks needed to deploy secure Web services simply weren't there yet. Now, however, the infrastructure is starting to fall into place with the emergence, adoption, and support of standards. Web services have finally reached the level of maturity needed to play a leading role in interoperability between applications and between enterprises.

We all know the idea behind SOA: instead of building monolithic applications, break them up into smaller services that are somehow aggregated into a larger solution to meet a business need. When the business need changes, create new versions of the services and reaggregate. When similar requirements arise, reuse the services you've already created, but perhaps in new ways.

This modular approach to application development is well proven. Efficiencies are realized in multiple areas, among them faster time-to-market, greater extensibility and flexibility, and a greater degree of code reuse.

That sounds simple enough, but there is still a piece missing. What's doing the service aggregation? Something needs to act as the "manager," overseeing the processes, coping with exceptions, providing status updates, grouping tasks into business transactions, and so forth. Where's the higher-brain function that will orchestrate these services?

This is one of the areas where BizTalk Server 2004 excels. My article in this issue ("Orchestrating Web Services") explains how BizTalk Server 2004 plays with Web services. It is ideally suited to and very capable of providing the higher-brain functionality needed to create successful services-based solutions built around Web services.

Getting Started
Say you read through all the BizTalk articles in this issue and decide that your company needs to get started with BizTalk right away. What do you do next? As with any brand new product, there will be an initial scarcity of educational resources. There are some excellent white papers on the way from Microsoft; depending on when you're reading this, some may already be available. I know for a fact that there will be at least one book, which I'm helping to write. Official training and certifications will follow.

Something that Neudesic has done on several occasions is to partner with a client to deliver a BizTalk proof of concept. We've gone in, trained the client's developers, and worked with them to create a solution. This is a win-win situation: the client uses a low-risk project to validate the technology, and they end up with a working system and developers who have been fast-tracked up the learning curve.

At Neudesic, we believe strongly in the future of BizTalk Server 2004. We have been deeply involved with the product-development cycle, working with the product team and early adopters to create BizTalk Server 2004 solutions. We've recruited some of the top BizTalk talent, and have invested significant resources in the product. We believe BizTalk represents an important addition to our development toolset.

From a messaging standpoint, we've created solutions that have massive message throughput, up to 1.5 million messages per hour! From a process automation perspective, coupled with SharePoint and InfoPath, we've created powerful solutions faster and with far less effort than ever before.

The future of BizTalk is very bright indeed, and we're looking forward to many more years of using BizTalk Server to help our clients meet their business needs.