Microsoft Canada Co. today unveiled pricing and packaging details for its forthcoming release of BizTalk® Server 2004, the industry-leading integration solution that is part of the Windows Server System™. Now in its third major release, BizTalk Server 2004 helps customers automate business processes by flexibly integrating applications, trading partners and employees.

Built on the Microsoft® .NET Framework and integrated with Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET 2003 and the Microsoft Office System, BizTalk Server 2004 will deliver enhanced business process orchestration functionality, new business activity monitoring (BAM) and human-based workflow capabilities, and a new, highly scalable rules engine.

In addition, the new BizTalk Server 2004 license will include copies of Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003, the company’s flagship development platform, and Microsoft Office InfoPath™ 2003, a new information-gathering program that offers rich, dynamic forms to more effectively share, reuse and repurpose information to streamline business processes.

Furthermore, BizTalk Server 2004 will enable Standard Edition and Partner Edition customers to connect to more applications and trading partners than in previous versions of the product and will be localized in nine languages, five more than in BizTalk Server 2002. Current BizTalk Server customers with Software Assurance will receive a license for BizTalk Server 2004.

Like the previous version of the product, BizTalk Server 2004 will be offered in four editions: Enterprise, Standard, Partner and Developer. The pricing for these editions is on par with the 2002 version, with ERP Open B pricing starting at $25,000 CPU for the Enterprise Edition, $7,000 CPU for the Standard Edition, $1,000 CPU for the Partner Edition and $750 per user for the Developer Edition, which can be used for development and testing purposes only.

In the Standard and Partner editions of BizTalk Server 2004, the number of trading partner and internal application connections will allow medium-sized and small businesses to connect to more trading partners and internal applications in the same cost-effective manner as before. BizTalk Server 2004 Standard Edition will allow customers to connect to 20 trading partners and 10 internal applications, while BizTalk Server 2004 Partner Edition will allow customers to connect to three trading partners and three internal applications. Today, Standard Edition customers can connect to 10 trading partners and five internal applications and Partner Edition customers can connect to two trading partners and two internal applications.

All versions of BizTalk Server 2004 will include rights to Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 and InfoPath for installation on a desktop. Providing rights to these products will increase developers’productivity by enabling them to create applications directly in BizTalk Server and allow business
users to gather and input information into a business process linked to back-end systems by BizTalk Server.

To meet the needs of the global enterprise, Microsoft will offer BizTalk Server 2004 in nine languages, including English, French, Spanish, German, Japanese, Italian, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, and Korean. Previous versions of the product have only supported four languages.

The availability of BizTalk Server 2004 has not yet been announced.

About BizTalk Server

BizTalk Server provides organizations with the core engine, development tools, adapters and vertical accelerators needed to integrate and automate their business. Using XML, SOAP and other core Internet transports and protocols, BizTalk Server unites EAI, B2B and business process management technology in a single product to allow companies to easily orchestrate Web services and rapidly build dynamic business processes that span applications, platforms and businesses.