Microsoft to bundle free adapters with BizTalk

Microsoft will include a host of new software adapters with BizTalk Server 2006, but the price of the product will go up

Microsoft will include a host of new software adapters with BizTalk Server 2006 without charging for them, but the price of the integration server will go up, according to the software's product manager.

Group product manager for Microsoft's business process and integration division, Steven Martin, said the majority of the adapters, which connected integration servers to enterprise software from companies such as Oracle, PeopleSoft and Siebel Systems, were acquired through Microsoft's purchase of iWay Software earlier this year.

Usually vendors selling integration software, such as IBM, sell adapters as an add-on purchase that drove up the cost of the software purchase significantly, he said.

"In an effort to save money, some customers tend to write these adapters themselves," Martin said. By including adapters with BizTalk Server, he said it would help customers make better architectural decisions up front because they had all the integration technology laid out for them.

There are 16 adapters that will be included in BizTalk Server 2006. Among them are adapters for Oracle Database Connector, Oracle Application Suite, PeopleSoft and Siebel, all of which are in the first beta release of the product that is out now.

Additional adapters that will be included in the product are Tibco Rendezvous, Tibco Enterprise Message Service (EMS), SAP, JD Edwards OneWorld XE, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, Amdocs ClarifyCRM and IBM's DB2. These adapters will be available in a future beta version of BizTalk Server 2006, according to Microsoft.

Though the BizTalk Server 2006 adapters are for all intents and purposes free, the price of the product would go up from its previous release, BizTalk Server 2004, Martin said.

BizTalk Server 2004 cost $US25,000 for the enterprise edition and $US7000 for the standard edition, whereas the next release would cost $US29,999 for the enterprise edition and $US8499 for the standard edition, he said.

BizTalk Server has strong technology ties to Microsoft's Visual Studio developer toolset and SQL Server database. New versions of all three products were launched Monday at an event in San Francisco.

Because Visual Studio is the developer platform for BizTalk and SQL Server is its underlying message store, customers that wanted to deploy BizTalk Server also must deploy those products, Martin said.

One developer license for Visual Studio 2005 would be included in the cost of BizTalk Server 2006, but SQL Server 2005 must be purchased separately, he said.

SQL Server 2006 costs $US24,999 for the enterprise edition and $US5999 for the standard edition.

Although Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 were available now, BizTalk Server 2006 wouldn't be available until the first half of 2006, Martin said. The product was in its first beta now and a second beta release would come out before the end of the year, he said.

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