We’re thrilled to announce that the BizTalk Services “R12” Community Technology Preview (CTP) is now available for general use. “BizTalk Services” is the code-name for a platform-in-the-cloud offering from Microsoft. Currently in active development, BizTalk Services provides Messaging, Workflow, and Identity functionality to enable disparate applications to connect quickly and easily. Combined together in an integrated offering, these capabilities deliver a Service Bus architectural pattern that is immediately usable by applications that need to connect across the Internet. Many enterprises employ the ‘Enterprise Service Bus’ pattern to interconnect disparate systems within an organizational domain. Built on Microsoft platform technology, an ESB might include building blocks such as Windows Server, Active Directory, BizTalk Server, as well as the Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation technologies included in the .NET Framework. “BizTalk Services” extends the concept of an ESB to truly exploit the Internet, for instance by exposing individual service endpoints in a secure fashion or by selectively federating elements of distinct identity systems to facilitate cross-company collaboration. For ISVs and Solution Providers creating specialized business solutions that enable collaboration and information exchange across increasingly mobile and distributed work-forces, “BizTalk Services” provides the cloud-based platform building blocks to create sophisticated (Internet-) Service Bus solutions with broad reach that could otherwise only be realized by operating dedicated Data Centers of significant complexity – which is often out of reach for both, ISVs and their customers. Major Changes With the release of BizTalk Services “R12”, developers must update all clients and SDK installations to the new release. New in R12 - Workflow The most exciting new capability we’ve added in the “R12” CTP is Workflow. These new cloud-based Workflow capabilities enable ‘service orchestration’ from the cloud. This specialized cloud-based, or hosted, Windows Workflow Foundation runtime can orchestrate services that connect to systems in your enterprise, or to systems running anywhere on the Internet via Web services messages. This new power and capability will enable an entirely new set of application scenarios, and we’re very excited to see what people will do with it. In the SDK you will find samples showing how to create and control Workflow instances hosted on the BizTalk Services cloud, including a sample Workflow implementation that monitors the availability of a website and fires multicast events into the service bus indicating the state. New in R12 - Identity For R12, the BizTalk Services Identity Service has been expanded and enhanced to enable more flexibility for scenarios demanded by our customers. R12 introduces a new approach for creating, viewing, and managing access control rules. This approach relies on a few key principles outlined Read More...