Date: Nov. 15, 2000
Link: http://www.vbxml.com/b2b/articles/biztalk_unleashed/6_biztalkasmiddleware.asp
Source Author or Organization: Mark Wilson, VBXML

In this article the author presents evidence for a characterization of BizTalk as a Swiss Army knife for Internet eCommerce that can deliver the promise of XML to existing and legacy business systems.

Large companies now typically have a large number of specialized systems, and existing middleware has become a loose confederation of DLLs, competing object models and ad-hoc solutions. Costs associated to the ad-hoc growth of applications and middleware to tie complex and disparate systems together include an increasing amount of development time and duplication of effort.

The author describes the core applications and architecture underpinning the BizTalk Server toolset.