Microsoft Strikes Up Orchestration

The next version of Microsoft's Windows Server operating system will include business process orchestration features to allow users to link together Web services, among other tasks, without the need for additional middleware. The technology will be lifted from BizTalk Server, according to Valerie Olague, director of Windows Server System marketing at Microsoft. BizTalk Server is Microsoft's product designed to help companies integrate disparate business applications and connect to business partners.

"We're baking common process orchestration into the infrastructure, taking it from BizTalk Server," Olague said in a speech Thursday at Microsoft's Mountain View, California, campus. Olague also previewed a new advertising campaign that will kick off February 9 to promote Microsoft's Windows Server System. The $20 million-plus campaign will spotlight Microsoft customers Toyota Motor, Motorola, Reuters, and Siemens AG. Microsoft has shared few details of its plans for a new Windows Server product, which is expected after the company releases the next Windows client, code-named Longhorn, probably in 2006. The Windows Server version of Longhorn will include Web services middleware code-named Indigo, which Olague said will include the orchestration technology.

Microsoft, together with IBM and BEA Systems, last year proposed a standard for Web services choreography with orchestration support called Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS). The new BizTalk Server 2004, due out in the coming months, also supports for BPEL4WS. "There is core BizTalk orchestration capability that we're going to put into the OS," Olague said in an interview after her presentation.

View: The full story