Can Microsoft do an Office in EAI?

The Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) market has always been a hotly contested field. Hitherto, IBM, BEA Systems and Tibco Software have dominated it. With the launch of BizTalk Server 2004, Microsoft’s strategy of offering a bigger bang for the CIO’s buck will make it the wildcard entry in EAI, says Srikanth R P

Business process integration has always been an expensive proposition keeping it beyond the reach of SMEs. With BizTalk 2004, Microsoft has a product that offers more features for the same price, says Tarun Malik

The earlier editions of BizTalk Server from Microsoft didn’t succeed in giving it the kind of foothold it wanted. With the latest iteration to its EAI product, the world’s largest software company has rolled out an aggressive pricing strategy that it hopes will help it penetrate the EAI space. The goal is to establish a lead in a sub-segment where there are no clear leaders yet, viz. the small and medium enterprise (SME) space. Analysts say that Microsoft is positioning the product as an economical Windows Server-based alternative to IBM’s WebSphere or BEA’s WebLogic. Microsoft’s mission is to convince CIOs that they’re better off using BizTalk to reap the benefits of EAI without betting the shop on a heavy-duty industrial-strength EAI solution. Microsoft does have an enterprise edition targeting large enterprises, but it is most likely to make an impact in the SME segment, that’s not dominated by Java-based middleware unlike the large enterprise segment.

As the earlier version did not quite make waves in the market, Microsoft is bundling more features for the same price. At $25,000 per server processor for the Enterprise Edition, $7,000 for the Standard Edition and $999 for the Partner Edition it now offers features such as human workflow services, business activity monitoring and support for Web services. Better yet, licenses for BizTalk Server 2004 will include copies of Visual Studio .NET 2003 and Microsoft Office’s InfoPath 2003 tool. The most important enhancement to BizTalk Server 2004 is the improved scalability, integration of the development environment into Visual Studio .NET and the addition of a business rules engine. Though the product is not proven in the marketplace, Microsoft claims that BizTalk Server 2004 can scale up to clusters of multiple servers. Its predecessor had limited cluster support. BizTalk 2004 supports up to eight processors compared to six earlier.

The Indian EAI market

While the Indian market for EAI software is quite small, it is growing rapidly. According to IDC India, the EAI services market is expected to grow at a four-year CAGR of 37.4 percent from $7.78 million in 2001-02 to $27.71 million by 2005-06. BizTalk has done fairly well in India with Microsoft claiming a client list that includes ICICI Bank, Moser Baer, MTNL, VSNL and NIC.

On the developer front, TCS and Cap Gemini Ernst & Young (CGE&Y) have announced initiatives around the product. While TCS is setting up a consulting practice and a centre of excellence CGE&Y will offer a solution built around BizTalk 2004 called ‘EAI in a box’.

Reduced costs

ICICI Bank claims that BizTalk Server 2004 will help it reduce development time and maintenance. According to Tarun Malik, product marketing manager, Microsoft Corporation India, “Business process integration has always been an expensive proposition keeping it beyond the reach of SMEs. With BizTalk 2004, Microsoft has a product that offers more features for the same price with the added advantage of in-built support for Web services.” Malik claims that developers can not only access Web services within a business process but also make business processes look like Web services. For instance, BizTalk Server 2004 has a tool called Business Rules Composer, that helps business users directly create and modify sets of business rules, which will then take effect immediately without the need for any technical tinkering. Additionally, business processes can be built using InfoPath and imported into BizTalk Server. The business rules engine is a big cost-saver for users who would otherwise have to buy a similar product from a third-party vendor.

Market analysts consider that Microsoft’s strategy of bringing in business analysts to design business processes will help it differentiate itself. Ramesh Sanka, financial controller and CIO, Moser Baer, says, “BizTalk Server 2004 offers us a cost-effective way of enabling process integration. The user’s familiarity with Microsoft tools is an additional advantage.”

Drawing on desktop dominance

Microsoft’s dominant position on the desktop is crucial to its product strategy for BizTalk. It is exploiting its near monopoly to better its position against well-entrenched rivals in the EAI space. For example, with the business activity monitoring tools in BizTalk 2004, users can view the progress of a business process in an Excel spreadsheet. Microsoft’s Visio (a diagramming product) can generate Business Process Execution Language (BPEL)-compliant code from a process designed by a business user or analyst. BPEL is a standard for programming business processes that can facilitate data exchange among trading partners, applications and business users. The interoperability of Microsoft Visio and Visual Studio .NET lets a business analyst define business processes, while developers make those processes happen.

Zensar, an Indian alliance partner of Microsoft, supports this view. A spokesperson of Zensar’s EAI practice says, “We believe that this version will help users develop and manage more complex business processes from environments within the Microsoft suite of products and Visual Studio .NET.”

Catching up with the leaders

Although Microsoft has traditionally lagged behind the leaders in the EAI space, BizTalk 2004 gives it a decent shot at forging ahead. “Microsoft’s plan to position BizTalk 2004 as a platform rather than a product gives customers a good TCO (total cost of ownership) advantage. BizTalk 2004 offers one of the best value propositions for SMEs (as it lowers the TCO). We believe that BizTalk has proved its capability even in large enterprises by handling high transaction volumes. We have set up a dedicated business unit that specialises in BizTalk and contrary to perception, most of our customers who have opted for BizTalk are large ones,” declares Sridhar Srinivasan, practice head, Global Microsoft Business Unit at Wipro Technologies, India’s second largest software services company.

Although Microsoft may find it difficult to displace EAI’s heavyweights on account of Unix’s popularity with India Inc., analysts believe that XML’s increasing popularity will prove advantageous to Microsoft.

Zensar’s EAI practice spokesperson explains, “Since XML will be used as the underlying transfer mechanism, the middleware dependency does not matter in EAI implementations. As standardisation takes place with technologies and protocols such as Web Services, XML, UML and BPML supported by almost all IT companies, the technology dependence on middleware is reducing.”

Microsoft also believes that BizTalk’s support for business processes will help reduce hard coding in projects. The challenge that Microsoft is presenting to its competitors is a lower cost of acquisition and implementation. Many developers believe that an integrated environment helps reduce development time. Ramesh Subramanian, director, Technology Services, CGE&Y India believes that this is due to “reduced personnel costs

associated with integration”. Microsoft is hoping that BizTalk’s lead in supporting of Web services and technologies such as XML and SOAP will endear it to developers.

The possibility that Microsoft could win market-share using its low-cost approach has led to IBM announcing WebSphere Business Integration Server Express that includes out-of-the box adapters for connecting to databases and applications via Java-based standards including JDBC and JMS or XML.

While the Redmond giant is still a long way off from threatening firms such as IBM and BEA Systems, BizTalk Server 2004 is Microsoft’s best chance of penetrating the highly-contested EAI space by starting with SMEs and working its way up.

ISV speak on BizTalk 2004

Spokesperson of Zensar’s EAI practice Business process integration is still in its infancy and will take time to mature. A few products in the market have this capability but they come at a premium taking them out of the reach of SMEs. With this release, Microsoft has added the capability of business process management and integration making the product attractive to mid-sized companies. Sridhar Srinivasan, Prac-tice Head, Global Microsoft Business Unit, Wipro Technologies BizTalk 2004 offers one of the best value propositions for SMEs as it lowers the total cost of ownership. We believe that BizTalk has proved its capability even in large enterprises handling high transaction volumes. Ramesh Subramanian, Director, Technology Ser-vices, CGE&Y India Integration with Visual Studio .NET helps us develop solutions faster reducing the personnel costs associated with integration. Venkatesh Iyer, Principal Consultant, Blue Star Infotech Its ease of use combined with the availability of skill sets (VB, VB.NET) makes BizTalk an attractive product compared to other vendors’ [offerings].

Flavours of BizTalk Server 2004
Edition	Target Market	Features
Enterprise Edition	Large organisations, trading hubs and digital marketplaces	Supports integration with unlimited internal applications and trading partners. It also supports SMP (symmetric multiprocessing -- distributes tasks among several CPUs using a load-sharing methodology) and clustering deployments to handle large transaction volumes.
Standard Edition	Small and medium enterprises	Lets a customer integrate as many as ten internal applications with up to 20 external trading partners such as exchanges or digital marketplaces. The Standard Edition lacks clustering or SMP support.
Partner Edition	Trading partners	Supports integrating up to two internal applications and two external trading partners. Does not support SMP or clusters, it's intended for organisations with modest transaction volumes.

What’s new in BizTalk?
Feature	Details
Business Process Management (BPM)	Supports Business Process Execution Language (BPEL), an emerging standard for linking business processes between trading partners, applications and business users.
Integration with Visual Studio .NET 2003	Helps developers build and manage processes using a single integrated development environment.
Health Activity Tracking	Allows administrators to monitor and manage the health of business processes.
Enterprise single sign-on	Streamlines the sign-on verification process for Windows and non-Windows users for accessing business applications.
Business rule engine	Enables business analysts to create rules and policies around business processes.
Business rule engine	Enables business analysts to create rules and policies around business processes.
Business Activity Monitoring	Provides business users the opportunity to monitor processes using familiar tools such as Microsoft Excel.

BizTalk in action

srikanth@expresscomputeronline.com