We've made some updates to the BizTalk Server Roadmap that will hopefully shed some light on what the plans are for the product with the pending R2 release as well as future versions of the product.  BizTalk Server 2006 R2 will feature a number of updates over the initial 2006 release including rich integration with Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation through the WCF Adapter SDK and new Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) interceptors for WCF and WF which will enable you to leverage BAM functionality in non-BizTalk applications, updated support for the 2007 Office System (which includes an update adapter for SharePoint Server), and comprehensive RFID support.

In addition to all the new capabilities introduced in BizTalk Server 2006 R2, the roadmap also provides a "sneak peak" in to the future strategy of BizTalk Server and the investments that are being made.  Head on over to the roadmap and check it out.

As I mentioned in my last post, I've had the opportunity to work on a number cool solutions in recent months.  One solution that I've been privileged to work on and help deliver is the Office Business Application Reference Architecture Pack for Public Sector (wow, say that 5 times fast!) and it has just been released to MSDN.  This reference architecture provides prescriptive architecture and guidance for addressing a major business problem within today's Public Sector organizations, that being the processing of electronic forms. It illustrates how an OBA (Office Business Application) can be built to automate and optimize forms processing.  The reference solution framework showcased in the RAP is generic and can be adapted to enable end-to-end processing of a number of electronic forms in the Public Sector.

This OBA solution was built using a number of technologies from the 2007 Office System and .NET 3.0 platforms.  Among those technologies include:

• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
• Microsoft Office InfoPath Forms Services
• Windows Workflow Foundation
• Windows Communication Foundation
• Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007
• Microsoft Office Outlook 2007

Also included as a part of the RAP are a number of supplementary materials including a click through demo, videos, technical and business presentations, and architecture whitepapers.  The RAP is being bundled as a Virtual Machine image, which will include the working application and source code and will be made available from our Microsoft Connect website.  You will be able to download the Virtual Machine image from there and can use either Virtual PC 2007 or Virtual Server 2005, which are both free, to run the solution.

This version of the RAP only marks phase I of a multi-phased approach for delivering OBA capabilities to address E-forms processing.  In future releases we'll be introducing more advanced capabilities, including:

• Personalized citizen portals
• Live Collaboration and Communication (Citizen to Organization, Organization to Citizen)
• E-Forms analytics and activity monitoring
• Advanced Office client integration for information workers
• Rich Internet Application (RIA) capabilities via Silverlight
• Integration of information cards using Windows CardSpace

So keep your browsers tuned into the many exciting things that'll be coming out of Public Sector.

Wow, October 18, 2005?  That was the date of my last post!  Well certainly a lot has happened since then!  I've had brief "blog post cameos" on my team's blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/publicsector, but I think it's about time I get back to my roots and start posting.  For those of you who've followed my blog, even back when I was on DotnetJunkies.com, you know that I joined Microsoft back in 2005 as a Technology Architect at the Microsoft Technology Center.  During my time there, I've had the opportunity to architect some of the coolest solutions on our platform.  The desire to further evangelize our platform in delivering robust solutions has landed me as an Architect Evangelist within our Public Sector Developer & Platform Evangelism team where I now work with customers to help them realize the potential of our platform in delivering compelling solutions that tackle many of the business problems that plague organizations today.  Still staying true to my SharePoint roots, I've been doing a lot of work helping customers architect Office Business Applications in efforts to exploit the power and flexibility of the 2007 Office System platform for delivering compelling business solutions.  In addition, I've also been focusing on helping customer deliver solutions using our take on SaaS (Software as a Service) methodologies with our S+S (Software+Services) initiatives, improving the web user experience with technologies our recently introduced Silverlight platform, as well as continuing to build robust, SOA-enabled enterprise applications using .NET 3.0.

I've had the opportunity to do a number of cool things that I'll be blogging about and I promise to not go on such long "blog sabbaticals" again :-)

Yeah, I know it's been AGES since my last blog post.  I'm not going to even begin making apologies or excuses.  I will say to those who've followed my blog, that I am going to start ramping up the frequency of my blogging, as I have a lot to talk about.  Upon joining Microsoft last January, I've not had much time to do a lot of things I did before I joined the collective.  Needless to say, however, that since joining Microsoft, I've gotten to see (or at least hear) about a number of new initiatives coming out of Redmond that's geared at making developer's lives a lot better.

For those of you who used to follow my blog on DotNetJunkies.com, you'll probably remember I had a series of posts on my design/development process around a custom XML-driven workflow engine I was working on (BTW, I'll be posting an archive of those posts on my new blog here).  Well, had I known then what I know now, I'd have definitely tried to get onboard our TAP (Technology Adoption Program) and gotten my customer involved with exploring Windows Workflow Foundation (formerly known as Windows Workflow Services and Windows Orchestration Engine (WinOE)) as well as pushed Microsoft in trying to support our current platform with a release of WF that'll work with v1.1 of the .NET Framework!

Windows Workflow Foundation, in a nutshell, is our new framework for building workflow-enabled applications.  It consists of a programming model, a full-blown workflow engine, and developer tools for building custom workflow solutions.  WF will sit as another namespace within our WinFX stack (System.Workflow) and will provide the necessary tools for building compelling workflow solutions for the Windows platform. Working here at the Microsoft Technology Center, one of my focuses is around connected systems and business process automation, alongside portals/collaboration of course [:)],and I've engaged with a number of customers who are searching for a solution to address their need for introducing workflow into their applications without having to resort to BizTalk Server or going with third-party workflow solutions.  With WF, we now have technology that we can position as an alternative solution that delivers rich functionality out-of-the-box for introducing workflow within their enterprise applications.

Over the course of my next several posts, I drill into Windows Workflow Foundation and discuss how you can build some value adding solutions with the technology.  As my own personal case study that'll fuel the posts, I'll use the custom engine I wrote a year ago and blogged about during my time on DotNetJunkies and completely rearchitect it to work with WF as well as Windows Communication Foundation (formely known as "Indigo").

But before I go hog wild about WF, let me first set some groundwork around the technology and basically tell you what it is NOT

• WF is not the next version of BizTalk Server - Customers whom I have engaged with recently and presented this new technology to get confused with where WF and BizTalk fit.  I've often fielded questions of whether WF will simply be a component of BizTalk Server or is it a replacement of the BRE (Business Rules Engine) or whether WF will be the platform of the future and BizTalk will get phased out in favor of building more integration tools/technologies into the operating system.  WF will serve as a common workflow solutions framework that will not only be leveraged by future versions BizTalk Server, but many of the future versions of a number of Microsoft products, including the Office System (Office, SharePoint Products & Technologies, etc), and the Microsoft Dynamics products (formerly known as Microsoft Business Solutions).  WF is geared at complementing BizTalk Server rather than serve as a replacement.  BizTalk will still have it's place in the Microsoft product roadmap as serving as our premier integration and business process management platform.  It is worth noting, however, that BizTalk developers will feel right at home with the development environment of WF and will be able to do things that you currently can't do with BizTalk Server.
• WF is not BizTalk Human Workflow Services (HWS) - Human Workflow Services (HWS) in BizTalk Server has always left a lot to be desired.  It has been a technology that has had great intentions, but very poor on execution.  In future versions of BizTalk, HWS will be phased out in favor of a more robust and extensible solution that leverages WF.

I've been working with this technology for the past several months now and I have to admit that this is one of the coolest things I've seen.  I strongly recommend that you go and download the whitepapers and the bits and get started in building compelling workflow solutions!