Microsoft eyes broader market for BizTalk Server

Aiming to sell more of its business integration software into international markets and the small and medium-sized business segment, Microsoft Corp. said its forthcoming BizTalk Server 2004 will support more languages and more connections in the less expensive editions.

BizTalk Server is software to help companies integrate disparate business applications and connect to business partners. Microsoft claims it has about 3,000 customers for the product, which competes with offerings from vendors including IBM Corp., webMethods Inc., Tibco Software Inc., SeeBeyond Technology Corp., and BEA Systems Inc.

Pricing for BizTalk Server 2004 will be unchanged from that of its predecessor, BizTalk Server 2002, said Eron Kelly, lead product manager for E-Business Server products. The product will be available early next year, he said, a slight delay from the earlier goal of delivering the product before the end of this year.

BizTalk Server 2004, like the 2002 version, will be sold in four editions. Enterprise Edition will cost US$25,000, Standard Edition $7,000, Partner Edition $1,000 and Developer Edition $750, Microsoft said in a statement . All prices are per processor, and Developer Edition can only be used for development and testing purposes.

Microsoft is expanding its market reach with the new release by increasing the number of supported languages from four to nine. Today the product is available in English, Japanese, French and German. Microsoft is adding Spanish, Italian, Korean, simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese, Kelly said.

Also, BizTalk Server 2004 Standard Edition will let users connect to 20 trading partners and 10 internal applications, while BizTalk Server 2004 Partner Edition will allow users to connect to three partners and three internal applications. With BizTalk Server 2002, Standard Edition allows 10 trading partners and 5 internal applications and Partner Edition is limited to two partners and two internal applications, Microsoft said.

"We are looking to drive more adoption in the midsized market through our Standard and Partner editions," Kelly said.

Enhancements in BizTalk Server 2004 include support for BPEL4WS (Business Process Execution Language for Web Services), integration with the Visual Studio .Net developer tool and with InfoPath and Excel, data gathering and spreadsheet products, respectively, which are part of Microsoft's Office System, Microsoft has said.

To drive adoption of Visual Studio .Net and InfoPath, Microsoft will include a copy of each product with a BizTalk Server 2004 license, Kelly said. "We anticipate customers will buy InfoPath for more users as they start to adopt it," he said.

Other features in BizTalk Server 2004 include single sign-on, a workflow engine and a business rules engine, Microsoft has said. The first beta of the product was released in June. There won't be a second beta, Kelly said.

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