Microsoft’s BizTalk allows organizations to automate business processes to become more efficient and profitable. Even though the most recent incarnation of BizTalk has been on the market for almost two years, potential customers are still curious about whether it is right for them.
We sat down with Ben, a BizTalk expert. Ben shared his thoughts on BizTalk’s benefits and how he has been able to help companies reduce complexity and improve manageability.
What Is His Experience with BizTalk?
Ben has worked with the solution in multiple capacities ranging from support to development, to architecture and has overseen BizTalk implementations in a variety of verticals, including retail, healthcare, and the supply chain. He’s just as comfortable working as a remote consultant or collaborating on-site during BizTalk implementations and training sessions and has supported Microsoft technical communities.
BizTalk’s Evolution
Businesses today are lucky, in Ben's opinion, because BizTalk is better than ever before. In a recent interview, he noted that over the past five years, the solution has matured.
Now, you can turn off EDI validation. In addition, you can tweak standard messaging formats to accommodate custom EDI codes customers might be using. That tweak will not affect other customers on the server, allowing you to increase trading partner satisfaction without causing major complications.
What Are the Benefits of BizTalk?
During our interview, Ben pointed to several benefits of BizTalk. One benefit is its rich features. BizTalk’s mapper is a visual interface for mapping, so you do not have to create all the code by hand. The mapper is powered by functoids, pre-packaged functionality that requires little or no coding. A business process designer, known as an orchestration, helps you tie business processes together. BizTalk’s pipelines create an end-to-end connection between processes for maximum efficiency. BizTalk offers 15 to 20 adapters out of the box, which does not even consider the number of third-party adapters available. Adapters serve as an integration point for web services. BizTalk’s ability to support cloud integrations also makes it desirable to many businesses.
What Should You Know about BizTalk?
Ben made noteworthy points about use cases for BizTalk. He remarked that it has more than one use; firms in the supply chain use it as an EDI tool, while companies outside of the supply chain utilize the solution for integration. “BizTalk gives you the ability to have a standard working service and lets you work off a standard architecture,” Ben commented.
Scalability is not an issue either, as he is aware of BizTalk environments with 100 integrations. For most clients, though, the bigger issue is how to get the most value out of this powerful tool, which is where he comes in. He suggests there is a wide variety of opportunities to improve efficiency from simple ones like reducing the number of ports to more involved approaches that require creating better design patterns.
Ben is just one of the many expert consultants Remedi partners with to ensure that your integration projects go smoothly and that all your needs are met completely.
Is BizTalk the right tool for you? Talk to Remedi’s expert consultants to discover. Contact us today!
