There are aspects of Dublin, .NET Services, and Oslo that all sound eerily familiar to BizTalk developers. It's not surprising to see such valuable capabilities escape the confines of a single product (BizTalk) and become more readily available as platform-level services. Durable workflow and content-based routing? Check. Diverse message exchange patterns and workflow meant to integrate disparate parties? Check. Designing executable models in a consistent way? Check. But what does all this mean to BizTalk Server and its legion of customers moving forward?
In mid-2008, Microsoft reaffirmed its investment in the BizTalk platform by promising to maintain a distinct development team which is chartered with regular releases of the product. The proposed feature list for future versions of BizTalk Server includes low latency messaging, richer development tools, stronger B2B management, and consistent support for the latest and greatest platform technologies.
But what role...