New SOA and Business Process Pack and New Branch Version of BizTalk

A couple of really interesting announcements were made regarding BizTalk at the recent Worldwide Partner Conference:

1) Come September 1st, we're going to be release the "SOA and Business Process Pack". SOA continues to gathers steam and more and more clients are asking us for guidance around implement SOA based architectures using our products. In response, we've created the "SOA and Business Process Pack".  To address these needs, we have created the SOA and Business Process Pack. The value of this Pack is that it defines more clearly the solution set needed to implement SOA/BPM solutions, provides pre-built integration between products, and provides guidance/patterns and reference architectures that enable faster time to value. is:

· Available on the price list as of September 1, it offers a 10% discount (in addition to volume price discounts)

· Includes BizTalk Server 2006 R2, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Visual Studio Team Systems, SQL Server 2005, .NET Framework

· Includes 4 Office Business Applications Ref Application Packs

· Is a Six month promotional offering

2) Many of our clients have expressed a desire to deploy multiple BizTalk environments in a Hub/Spoke situation. (I.e. Have a large BizTalk system deployed at a head office with smaller cheaper systems deployed at retail stores that feed information back up to the head office) To address this situation, we've now announced a new version of BizTalk known as the Branch edition. This new and cheaper edition can be used by clients that have already deployed at least one instance of BizTalk Enterprise.

Cheers and keep on BizTalk.

Peter