Why Biztalk 2000 may become Biztalk 2001

Analysts have said delays to Microsoft's Biztalk Server 2000 should not harm its position in the application server market, because the sector is still very fragmented.

Biztalk is an XML-based server that can send and receive business documents such as purchase orders and invoices to other XML-based servers, whether they are located within an organisation or externally.

The offering, which was scheduled to ship this year, is now expected to appear at the beginning of next year, because Microsoft apparently believes that it needs to add extra functionality. This means that the software could miss the millennium shipment date implied by its name and instead become Biztalk Server 2001.

Microsoft is, like many other players with rival products, positioning Biztalk as a potential replacement to traditional electronic data interchange (EDI) systems.

The advantage such systems have over EDI is that, instead of simply enabling two co-operating business partners to communicate with each other, they enable companies to communicate with a much larger range of suppliers, customers and business partners over the internet.

But according to Rob Hailstone, an analyst at ID, Biztalk's domination of the market is not a given as not everyone is likely to standardise on it. "However, if the world says 'yes Biztalk is what we're going to use', it would put Microsoft in a hugely powerful position," said Hailstone.

Raising the standard
And other XML-based alternatives are also currently under development, including Rosettanet. The independent industry consortium, which was launched in June 1998, is developing electronic interfaces that are intended to facilitate the exchange of business documents between supply chain partners, but will include support for existing EDI systems.

The emerging standard is being backed by industry heavyweights such as Intel, AMD, Canon, Compaq, Gateway, Hewlett Packard and Agilent Technologies, and even Microsoft itself.

But Hailstone believes the software giant has taken a slightly different stance on how to approach this market than its rivals. "The difference between what Microsoft is doing and the alternatives is that Microsoft is both pushing the document standards and deploying the server technology to deploy those standards," he said.

"The alternative is largely made up of independent bodies developing standards for interchange and leaving it to third-party manufacturers to deploy."

But Biztalk plays a central role in Microsoft's .Net and DNA strategies, which use XML as the main data transfer mechanism, according to Meta Group analyst Ashim Pal. "With .Net, one of the things Microsoft is talking about is XML-enablement, which Biztalk Server allows," he explained.

Analysts had mixed views as to what effects the delays to Biztalk would have on customers, however. "Obviously it is going to have some impact for those folks who made a commitment on beta software," said Pal.

But he acknowledged that delays should not be too problematic, because most organisations are still only piloting rather than fully deploying such technology, whether it comes from Microsoft or other players. "For most users, this will have very little impact," said Pal. This is because they are "experimenting with it rather than using it as a substantial server infrastructure".

Microsoft under fire
Marks and Spencer is one of the companies that pledged to roll out Biztalk 2000, and it criticised Microsoft for the delay earlier in the year.

Meanwhile, Ovum analyst Christine Axon predicted that most users who planned to deploy Biztalk as a strategic product would be able to start rollout using the beta version, which shipped in August - 18 months after Microsoft first unveiled the concept.

And although Pal claimed that delays could "give people at Sun and IBM the opportunity to catch up", he could not see any of the other vendors surging ahead of the Redmond giant.

Independent US analyst Sanjeev Darma agreed. "Delays to software are never good, but I don't think [Microsoft's] rivals are going to get any sustainable advantage," he said.

In his opinion, the market is currently too fragmented for this to happen, and while there are already interesting products around, most manufacturers will have problems packaging them as attractively as Microsoft. The company "will go for the sweet spot in terms of pricing and functionality", he claimed.

And all of the analysts agreed that the stakes in the ecommerce market are currently high enough for Microsoft to take some time and try to get the product right.

Pal said Microsoft "jumped the gun a bit in announcing [Biztalk Server], but that's a marketing mistake. But it's better that it put it out good and late rather than bad and early".

"My opinion is that Microsoft has been slated time and time again for having products with bugs in. So now it betas everything," Ovum's Axon said. "It's not prepared to send it out until every single thing is sorted out."

But Graham Fisher, an analyst at Bloor Research, claimed that Microsoft had little choice but to release the product late, because users would no longer stand for software that was riddled with bugs. "Software development has to be that much better than perhaps it would have been before," he said.