Biztalk 2013 Beta released

Microsoft finally released a beta version of the new biztalk, wich can be found here.
The first thing that should be noticed is that Microsoft decided to change the next versions name from Biztalk 2010R2 to Biztalk 2013. This has some very important consequences… It indicates the next version to be a major release, which implies a much longer support from Microsoft.
Microsoft’s support lifecycle policy says that products will have 5+5 years (mainstream+extended) support. However, that applies to major versions. If the product would still be BizTalk Server 2010 R2, it will not get an extended support lifecycle end date.

So in conclusion, having the next Biztalk version being a full release is an important sign to the market, it implies a much longer support lifecycle for the product.


Biztalk 2013 will have following new features:

• Integration with Cloud Services: messages using different relay endpoints hosted on Azure.


• RESTful services: provides adapters to invoke REST endpoints as well as expose BizTalk Server artifacts as a RESTful service.


• Enhanced SharePoint adapter: the need for dependency on SharePoint farms has been removed, while still providing backward compatibility.


• SFTP adapter: added an SFTP adapter that will enable sending and receiving messages from an SFTP server.


• ESB Toolkit integration: ESB Toolkit is now fully integrated with BizTalk Server. Also, the ESB Toolkit configuration experience is vastly simplified to enable a quick setup.


• Dependency tracking: dependencies between artifacts can now be viewed and navigated in Admin console.


• Improvements in dynamic send ports: the ability to set host handler per adapter, instead of always using the default send handler of the adapters.