The Evolution of BizTalk Server

Published on : Mar 27, 2013

Category : BizTalk Server

Saravana

Author

Last week Microsoft announced the release of BizTalk Server 2013 RTM, there are enough materials out there showcasing the new capabilities that’s been added to the product. We blogged in detail about the core licensing changes here. This is the 8th (2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2006 R2, 2009, 2010, 2013) major release of BizTalk Server. Microsoft consistently delivered a new version of the product every 2 years since 2000. The major revolutionary architecture change was made in 2004 switching from old Visio based orchestration designer, COM, etc. to highly polished orchestration designed integrated into Visual studio and switch to .NET Framework 1.1. BizTalk Server Evolution BizTalk is not a standalone product, it got various other core dependencies with other Microsoft products for it’s normal functioning. The following is the list of those dependencies.
  • .NET Framework
  • Visual Studio
  • SQL Server, and
  • Windows (client/server)
  • Office (for BAM scenarios)
  • System Centre (for monitoring)
All the above technology constantly evolve and moving forward consistently,  and it’s always mandatory for the BizTalk product group to keep up with the phase and do platform alignment in every release. The above ones are only related to Microsoft technologies, but also need to bear in mind, BizTalk Server is a middle ware platform and it integrates with various other things like SAP, Oracle, etc. and also various standard like SWIFT, HL7, HIPAA etc. they all evolve with various versions and it’s pretty hard task to keep up with all the industry standard. Sometime people take it for granted and underestimate the importance of the keyword “Platform alignment“. In addition to the major releases, Microsoft also released various service packs and cummulative updates in between major releases to address bugs and bring some new capabilities. Here is the complete list of BizTalk Server versions, their internal BizTalk Server version number and the release date. It includes all the cumulative updates and service packs. BizTalk Server Evolution - Release History Just for fun we added a nice Infographic to showcase the platform alignment since 2004. BizTalk Server Evolution - Platform Alignment Infographic