.NETDJ Guest Editor Jame Healy recently interviewed Microsoft's Scott Woodgate, lead product manager for Microsoft's E-Business Servers group. In this exclusive interview, Woodgate talks about the history of BizTalk Server, the process of developing a new BizTalk Server version, and bridging the gap between developers and business analysts.

.NETDJ: Scott, tell me a little bit about yourself. How did you get where you are now - working at Microsoft and within such an exciting team?
SW: I guess you could say I have taken a somewhat unorthodox path to Microsoft. To be honest, the real reason I came to Seattle was not for Microsoft, but because I had a passion for a woman, now my wife, who was coming here to get her PhD in finance. At that time my secondary passion was building software, and Microsoft's diversity fit my equally diverse background pretty well. Prior to coming to the U.S., I received a PhD in chemistry, a bachelor's in commerce, and a diploma in computer science, which led me to working as an EAI/B2B project manager in New Zealand.

.NETDJ: You are lead product manager within Microsoft's e-Business Servers group. What does that mean exactly, and what are your responsibilities in particular?
SW: In essence, we spend our time talking to customers and partners, analyzing our customers' business problems, and then working hard to solve those problems with software. This means we look at our customers' pain points, determine what solutions are on the market today, and analyze the market opportunities for new solutions. We call this product planning, although I am open to new, more creative names.

Once we have done our due diligence with customers and partners, then we can begin to coordinate with our development organization to make certain the products we build actually solve a business problem for our customers. The process can be tricky because customer requirements and the market tend to change very rapidly, so keeping in touch with our customers and partners throughout this process is critically important.

Finally, when a product is finalized and delivered to customers, we begin the process anew. I can say it is very gratifying to deliver a product to a customer that meets their needs, gives them a competitive advantage, and saves them money.

.NETDJ: BizTalk has a longer pedigree than its "version" suggests. What is the real history of BizTalk Server, and how has the vision for this product changed over the past few years?
SW: BizTalk Server is approaching its third major release and has been running in production customer sites since late 2000. In speaking with customers during our nearly two-year product-planning phase, we realized they needed software that allowed IT professionals, developers, and business analysts to take part in managing mission-critical business processes. Therefore, we worked to make certain BizTalk Server 2004 addresses the frustrations and challenges facing customers today by providing an improved developer and business analyst experience so customers can achieve their business process integration goals effectively and efficiently, with reduced development time and decreased time-to-value.

.NETDJ: With this attention to information workers and business analysts, what types of integration with BizTalk Server are we likely to see within Microsoft's product portfolio? Will we see Microsoft InfoPath, Windows SharePoint Services, and others?
SW: Today, information workers and business analysts are dealing with more forms of electronic data and content than ever before. The days of the paper memo and fax are gone in most enterprises, and they are beginning to be things of the past in smaller enterprises as well. Given that, we recognized that businesses are very familiar with applications like Excel, Word, etc., and want to continue to utilize those technologies to harness data and content. It really comes down to increasing productivity without having to take the time to learn something new.

Therefore, we set out to find ways for business analysts and information workers to use these applications to access and act on critical business data. In BizTalk Server 2004, a customer will be able to see a critical business activity or process such as a purchase order, determine the health of that activity or process, and act on it. This might mean sending an e-mail to the plant manager to determine why a customer order is taking so long to process. Microsoft has been giving IT professionals tools to monitor their IT systems for a long time, so we thought the business analyst and information worker should have similar tools, too.

I strongly suspect you'll see us work to link people, processes, and data in a more effective and efficient fashion moving forward.

.NETDJ: Gartner recently placed Microsoft's BizTalk Server into the "leader quadrant" of its Application Integration Broker Suites Magic Quadrant. What does this really mean, and how is Microsoft positioning BizTalk as an alternative in this market?
SW: Gartner talks to a lot of customers, so their view of the market reflects the views of a lot of customers. Therefore, Microsoft considers a leadership position in the Gartner EAI Magic Quadrant to be a sign of customer satisfaction. We were really proud of this accomplishment, but both Gartner and our customers told us we could do more. So, we worked very hard to address this feedback, and it manifests itself in the new Business Activity Monitoring, or BAM, technology, the new workflow technology, the new rules engine, and the improved business process management technology in BizTalk Server 2004.

In terms of differentiators, customers tell us they chose BizTalk Server because the technology meets their needs without being needlessly complex, because it is integrated with other parts of the Microsoft enterprise platform, and because it is cost-effective.

.NETDJ: As one of the world's most influential companies, Microsoft must have a need to support thousands of trading partners, as well as hundreds of internal applications. What is the internal strategy for using BizTalk Server to solve some of these integration challenges?
SW: That's an interesting question. With BizTalk Server 2002, we actually took technology Microsoft developed internally to connect to its trading partners and put it in the product. The technology that was placed into BizTalk Server 2002 was called SEED [Super Effective and Efficient Delivery] and was developed to rapidly automate the process of connecting to business partners over the Internet, largely to address the trading partner integration needs of customers.

The internal "dogfooding" process allows for ongoing product enhancement and customer feedback, which can be tougher than you think. Microsoft is our first customer for all of our products, and they are currently in our BizTalk Server 2004 early adopter program, providing great feedback and insight into development. Whether a company has two business partners or thousands, using the advanced new SEED technology in BizTalk Server allows them to automate the configuration and testing of connections with business partners.

.NETDJ: How does BizTalk Server fit within Microsoft's product portfolio, specifically within the E-Business Servers group?
SW: BizTalk Server is the foundation of the E-Business Servers and will serve as an important piece of functionality within the Windows Server System. Because Microsoft developed BizTalk Server 2004 in a componentized fashion, functionality like the business process orchestration and rules engine will be used by other technologies within the Microsoft software platform.

.NETDJ: What is the Jupiter initiative and what is BizTalk's relationship to it?
SW: Microsoft's codeword "Jupiter" describes a vision to provide an e-business offering that allows companies to connect people, processes, and data in any easy-to-use, low-cost fashion. To this end, BizTalk Server 2004 gives developers the tools to create business processes and enables business analysts and information workers to manage and monitor these business processes. In the past, business analysts and information workers have been locked out of this process.

.NETDJ: What is it about this integration platform that excites you, and what do you believe will be an exciting aspect of this emerging market in years to come?
SW: I'm really excited about this release, not only because I think it will take business process management [BPM] mainstream but also because it delivers on key customer requests, such as adapters for SQL and FTP, and business activity monitoring functionality, as well as the ability to handle large files seamlessly. Additionally, we are seeing an emerging trend that makes it necessary for integration offerings to provide real business value surfaced in business-user applications, rather than integration technology simply being a piece of a monolithic infrastructure deployment. That's why we are very excited about the tools in BizTalk Server 2004 that enable business users to obtain real-time information on critical business performance metrics and data.

Finally, BizTalk Server 2004's BPM tools are integrated with Visual Studio .NET, giving developers a single, familiar, and significantly improved development environment. Microsoft has a history of providing world-class development tools to the enterprise, and we think the combination of VS.NET and BizTalk Server will give developers a significant advantage as they build application integration and business process management solutions.

.NETDJ: What's next for this product? I can only imagine you are well into the requirements-gathering phase of the next version. Are there any highlights that you can share with us at this time?
SW: We are collecting requirements for the next version of BizTalk Server, but we don't want to put the cart too far in front of the horse. BizTalk Server 2004 is a major release, and we think customers are going to be able to obtain great time-to-market and a competitive advantage when deploying BizTalk Server-based solutions.

In terms of the future, we will always be looking at better ways to integrate with other Microsoft products, like InfoPath, SQL Server, etc. And I suspect we'll continue to work to bridge the gap between developers and business analysts, with the goal being to give both groups solid tools to collaborate and share data where appropriate.

.NETDJ: What's next for you Scott? Do you intend to stay in an influential role within this group, or do you have aspirations for something more at Microsoft? Should Steve Ballmer make some room for you at the top?
SW: One of the great things about Microsoft is role flexibility. I've really enjoyed my time in the BizTalk Server team in multiple roles over the years, and I really enjoy working on cutting-edge technologies that solve business problems for customers. However, today about the only things I share with Steve are an office in the same building and a passion for technology.

About Scott Woodgate
Scott Woodgate is lead product manager for Microsoft's E-Business servers group. He is responsible for product planning and technical customer awareness worldwide, and spends a considerable amount of his time engaging with customers and partners. Scott has written BizTalk Server whitepapers, MSDN content, courseware and exams, and is coauthor of Professional BizTalk.
scottwoo@microsoft.com