Biztalk Server Faqs 1

Q.What is BizTalk Server?
A.
BizTalk is a Business Process Management Server designed to connect the people, processes and information that you need to effectively manage and grow your business. By connecting applications within and between organizations, and providing the tools to let business staff define, create and modify the business processes that depend on that software, BizTalk Server provides real-time visibility into critical business functioning, maximizing your organizational agility. BizTalk Server 2006 is the fourth major release of the product, and offers dependable, scalable and enterprise-ready business process management.
Q.What does Business Process Management (BPM) mean?
A.
Business process management refers to the automation of manual processes and the subsequent optimization of those processes. The goal of management is to improve the flow of business processes such that efficiencies are improved, risks are lessened and costs are lower.
Components of Microsoft’s Business Process Management Solutions

Business Process Management
Tools and technologies to manage business processes that span applications and organizational boundaries.
Application Integration
Internal application integration within an enterprise using either standard or proprietary communication protocols
Business-to-Business Integration
External integration with trading partners, customers or suppliers using either standard or proprietary communication protocols
Q.What is Microsoft’s business process management strategy?
A.
Early business process automation approaches were comprised of many independent technologies that separately met needs for business process management and integration, but together were expensive and hard to manage. Microsoft’s strategy has been to align these technologies, enabling organizations to more readily automate and optimize processes, thereby improving efficiencies, decreasing costs and improving business value.
Q.Our company isn’t a large enterprise. Why would it be important for us to automate and manage our businesses processes?
A.
More and more large customers and suppliers are demanding that the businesses in their supply chain automate in order to eliminate inefficiencies and reduce costs. While these mandates and government regulations impose a burden on small and midsize companies, achieving compliance (with Sarbanes-Oxley Act, for example) promotes business process transparency and better process controls, both of which can greatly benefit the organization. If a business analyst needs to exchange information with a trading partner, or needs to obtain information that resides within the company but on different computer systems, applications, or in different parts of the organization, then business process automation and management—both between and within businesses—can provide the solution.
Q.
What business advantages can BizTalk Server offer midsize companies?
A.
BizTalk Server provides a single solution for business process management, enabling companies to effectively communicate both within organizations and between trading partners. BizTalk Server not only connects legacy systems and applications together, it also lets you define your organizational business processes, connect the process to the people and systems, and manage the events and key performance indicators within each process in order to ensure that the business is running effectively and efficiently.