Microsoft also made available a beta release of BizTalk Server 2010, which supports Windows Server AppFabric. BizTalk Server 2010 is due to be released to manufacturing – which happens shortly before the product is made generally available – in the third quarter of this year. Using distributed caching, Windows Server AppFabric offers speed, scalability, and high availability for Web applications, Microsoft said. AppFabric also features tools to simplify development and management of composite applications built using Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation.
BizTalk Server is Microsoft’s Integration and connectivity server solution. A mature product on its sixth release, BizTalk Server provides a solution that allows organizations to more easily connect disparate systems. Including over 25 multi-platform adapters and a robust messaging infrastructure, BizTalk Server provides connectivity between core systems both inside and outside your organization. In addition to integration functionality, BizTalk also provides strong durable messaging, a rules engine, EDI connectivity, Business Activity Monitoring (BAM), RFID capabilities and IBM Host/Mainframe connectivity.
Microsoft Azure platform AppFabric helps developers connect applications and services in the cloud or on-premises. This includes applications running on Windows Azure, Windows Server and a number of other platforms including Java, Ruby, PHP and others. It provides a Service Bus for connectivity across network and organizational boundaries, and Access Control for federated authorization as a service.
“AppFabric is an add-on to Windows Server. It provides higher level application server capabilities to Windows Server,” said Burley Kawasaki, director of developer platform management at Microsoft. These capabilities include in-memory caching to speed up Web applications. These caching capabilities have been codenamed Velocity.
AppFabric extends Windows Server to manage and host .Net applications. BizTalk Server 2010, which provides enterprise service bus capabilities and supports systems integration, and AppFabric enable deployment of composite applications that can, for example, bring together information into a single dashboard.
Key improvements in BizTalk Server 2010 include integration with AppFabric and B2B capabilities. AppFabric can be downloaded from Microsoft’s Website. The beta of BizTalk Server 2010 is also available