In this chapter, we looked at what BizTalk is, its core use cases, and how it works. In my experience, one of the biggest competitors to BizTalk Server is not another product, but custom-built solutions. Many organizations engage a "build versus buy" debate prior to committing to a commercial product. In this chapter, I highlighted just a few aspects of BizTalk that make it a compelling choice for usage. With BizTalk Server you get a well-designed scalable messaging engine with a durable persistence tier which guarantees that your mission-critical messages are not lost in transit. The engine also provides native support for message tracking, recoverability, and straightforward scalability. BizTalk provides you 20+ native application adapters that save weeks of custom development time and testing. We also got a glimpse of BizTalk's integrated workflow toolset that enables us to quickly build executable business processes that run in a load-balanced environment. These features alone often tip the scales in BizTalk Server's favor, not to mention the multitude of features that we have yet to discuss such as Enterprise Single Sign On the Business Rules Engine, Business Activity Monitoring, and more.

I hope that this chapter also planted some seeds in your mind with regards to thinking about BizTalk solutions in a service-oriented fashion. There are best practices for designing reusable, maintainable solutions that we will investigate throughout the rest of this book. In the next chapter, we'll explore one of the most critical technologies for building robust service interfaces in BizTalk Server: Windows Communication Foundation.