ORLANDO, Fla., June 5, 2000 — Today at TechEd, Microsoft Corp. Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates announced BizTalk™
Orchestration, breakthrough new technology for creating and managing complex business processes that span multiple applications, platforms, services and organizations behind the firewall and over the Internet. This revolutionary new technology will help customers take advantage of new business opportunities and coordinate relationships with trading partners over the Web.
Expected to ship later this summer, the first beta version of Microsoft® BizTalk Server 2000 will include BizTalk Orchestration. BizTalk Server 2000 is a key component of Windows® DNA 2000, Microsoft’s platform for rapidly building next-generation Web solutions that easily integrate with existing systems.
Examples of complex business processes that span multiple applications or organizations include corporate procurement, supply-chain integration and business-to-business marketplaces. A corporate procurement solution might need to integrate and automate the employee-facing procurement application, the company’s accounting system, and multiple suppliers’ order management and shipping systems. In this type of environment, BizTalk Orchestration provides a means for business analysts defining policies and developers writing code to cooperatively implement solutions. Each group can independently change and evolve specific processes and individual components or application building blocks without having to rearchitect the entire solution.
“BizTalk Orchestration gives business analysts and developers a conductor’s baton to dramatically simplify the integration and automation of business interactions inside and between companies,”
said Paul Maritz, vice president of the Platforms Group at Microsoft.
“The benefits of BizTalk Orchestration are improved cycle times and deeper virtual partnerships between organizations.”
BizTalk Orchestration Software
The BizTalk Orchestration software includes visual design tools, an engine for orchestrating processes, and an open binding architecture for integrating with any application:
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Visual design tools . A drag-and-drop design environment based on the popular Visio® graphics tool helps business analysts and developers graphically define and modify interactions between applications and organizations at the business-process level — rather than through low-level software interfaces. Processes can be graphically connected with specific components and applications to build solutions.
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Orchestration engine . A runtime helps execute, monitor and debug business processes.
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Binding architecture . An open mechanism helps connect business processes with any application or component running on any platform over any protocol to enable
“any-to-any”
integration.
Dell Chooses BizTalk Server 2000 for Supply Chain Automation
With its diverse supply chain and high transaction volumes, Dell Computer Corp.’s DellWare division needs robust software to help link multiple partners that supply products to Dell customers. BizTalk Server 2000, with its any-to-any integration and support for dynamic processes, proves to be the answer to the challenge. Using BizTalk Orchestration, Dell is able to quickly and easily define its business processes and integrate them with suppliers and their applications.
“BizTalk Server 2000 is a powerful solution for automating this piece of our business,”
said Ralph Hilliard, director of IT for Dell’s DellWare division.
“It provides the technologies and flexibility we need to more simply manage and change our supply chain.”
On June 6, Dell plans to go into live production with the pricing and availability portion of automating DellWare’s supply chain using BizTalk Orchestration and BizTalk Server 2000.
About Windows DNA 2000
Windows DNA 2000 is Microsoft’s platform for rapidly building and deploying next-generation e-commerce, line-of-business and Web solutions that easily integrate with customers, partners and existing applications. In addition to Windows 2000, other components of the Windows DNA 2000 platform include Visual Studio, Microsoft SQL Server™ , the COM+ component and programming model and other application services – all best-of-breed products that utilize the deepest developer talent pool and third-party market in the industry.
More information on Windows DNA 2000 can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsdna/ . More information on BizTalk Orchestration and BizTalk Server 2000 can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/ .
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers
a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software — any time, any place and on any device.
Microsoft, BizTalk, Visio and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.
The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
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