SAN FRANCISCO — Nov. 7, 2005 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that it will include 16 new application and technology adapters in the Enterprise and Standard editions of BizTalk® Server 2006 at no additional charge, including adapters for Oracle Corp., PeopleSoft and Siebel Systems Inc. This announcement marks a significant break from the industry norm of charging additional license fees for application and technology adapters, and offers customers a simple and cost-effective way to reduce the complexity of purchasing, building and implementing application integration and business process automation solutions. Separately, Microsoft announced pricing, licensing and product timelines for BizTalk Server 2006.
“Enterprises and medium-sized businesses continue to rank the integration of diverse applications and the automation of business processes among their most pressing IT needs,” said Robert Wahbe, general manager of the Connected Systems Division at Microsoft. “With BizTalk Server 2006, we are building on the growth of the most successful integration technology in history to deliver new value to customers, including improved deployment, management and business activity monitoring capabilities. The feedback we are getting from IT professionals, developers and business users validates our approach to the development of this product.”
The new version of Microsoft® BizTalk Server will feature 16 new adapters, nine of which were previously developed or sold by third parties. BizTalk Server 2006 Enterprise and Standard editions will include adapters for Oracle Database Connector, Oracle Application Suite, PeopleSoft and Siebel, all of which are now in beta 1 form for customers to experience. Additional adapters for TIBCO Rendezvous, TIBCO EMS, SAP, JD Edwards OneWorld XE, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, Amdocs ClarifyCRM, IBM DB2, Host Files, Host Applications, POP3, Windows® SharePoint® Services and SQL Server™ will be in beta phase soon and included in BizTalk Server 2006. The inclusion of these new adapters will result in a simplified buying, development and deployment experience for customers.
“Organizations continue to look for integration solutions that jump-start individual projects and scale easily for enterprisewide deployments,” said Janelle Hill, research vice president at Gartner Inc. “In addition to mission-critical connectivity out of the box, users want licensing and pricing options that do not inhibit broad deployments due to contractual complexity and costs to scale the number of connections.”
Enterprise Customers Moving to BizTalk Server 2006 Today
With the release of BizTalk Server 2006’s Community Technology Preview (CTP), enterprise customers are beginning to experience the new management and deployment features in the product. These features include new tools to upgrade mission-critical solutions built on BizTalk Server 2004 and manage those solutions more efficiently.
Siemens AG, one of the world’s largest companies and the leader in sales of electronic and electrical equipment, uses BizTalk Server to integrate key business applications and automate several previously manual business processes. Recently Siemens Information Technology (IT) Operations, the group responsible for this effort, began deploying BizTalk Server 2006 to obtain the benefits of the new management and deployment features in the product. Siemens IT Operations also found the upgrade to BizTalk Server 2006 to be surprisingly easy.
“Our ability to connect applications seamlessly and to automate critical business processes is a crucial part of our ability to deliver value to customers and shareholders,” said Tom Buse, project manager for Siemens IT Operations. “With BizTalk Server 2006, we are already seeing an improvement of 83 percent in the time it takes to deploy solutions for our customers, and the ease of migration from BizTalk Server 2004 to BizTalk Server 2006 will make the value of these solutions that much better.”
BizTalk Server 2006 Community Technology Preview
Microsoft also announced the CTP of BizTalk Server 2006, enabling early adopters to test the product and provide feedback on it; and announced that BizTalk Server 2006 Beta 2 is scheduled to be available later this calendar year, with availability of the final version of the product slated for the first half of 2006 after the company obtains customer feedback.
In addition, Microsoft announced changes to the planned pricing and packaging for BizTalk Server 2006. Specifically, BizTalk Server 2006 Enterprise Edition will be offered for $29,999, and Standard Edition will be offered for $8,499. To lower the barrier to entry, Microsoft will reduce the price of its BizTalk Server 2006 Developer Edition from $749 to $449.
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