BizTalk Server Solves Business Needs
BizTalk Server solves several business needs and helps an organization stay in business. In any business model, efficiency allows the organization to decrease overhead costs and thus provides the organization the capability to operate more profitably than other less-efficient organizations. When competition or market conditions force prices to fall, anything that the organization can do to improve its efficiency and lower its costs will help the organization remain profitable.
Additionally, BizTalk Server can improve the response times on transactions and communications, improve relationships, and decrease transaction costs so that the organization can grow its market size and customer base without extending excessive costs to achieve the growth. BizTalk Server enables an organization to meet the business challenges of growth without exponentially increasing overhead costs and inefficiencies.
Providing Tools to Exchange Disparate Information
BizTalk Server is a single server system that accepts various data inputs and transmits various data outputs both in a common XML-based format or through the support of standard transaction formats such as EDI or HTTP. Chapter 3, “Overview of BizTalk Server,” provides an introduction to the graphical mapping tool included with the BizTalk Server software that helps an organization map data fields for information exchange. With the graphical tool, an organization can take proprietary input data (or structured common information data) and map fields between the input and the output system.
Through the inclusion of integrated security technologies built-in to Windows 2000 and BizTalk Server, transacted communications is secured to ensure privacy and data integrity.
Improving the Speed of Data Interchange
When mapped, information can be exchanged automatically between business trading partners, and there is no need for double or multiple manual entry of information. Additionally, there is no need for scheduled exports or imports or datasets nor is there a need to go through a third-party communication provider, such as a Value-Added Network (VAN) commonly used in EDI transactions. By mapping information directly between business partners, organizations can set up a direct connection over a private telecommunication connection (such as a lease line), or the organization can set up a server-to-server dial-up communication link, or even set up a virtual private network over the Internet to directly connect business partners for communications.
By improving the method and process of communications between business partners, an organization can increase the speed of data interchange. This efficiency translates not only to faster transaction processing, but also means fewer levels of double entry, conversion scripts, and other transactional communication systems that can induce corruption of data and transactional delays in information processing.
Creating Transaction Standards
Another benefit of BizTalk Server is its use of standards. BizTalk Server uses industry standard XML and SOAP to link messaging formats between business partner systems, or it can use existing standards, such as EDI ANSI X12 or HTTP. The biggest drawback in most B2B integrated solutions is the dependence on a proprietary gateway that links the information between business systems. Although the proprietary system fulfills the need to integrate two systems, it provides no scalability or cross-integration with other systems; therefore, a gateway or proprietary communication system must be purchased, configured, and supported between every business application.
Additional transaction standards supported by BizTalk Server include HTTPS, SMTP, and MSMQ. These formats enable secured transaction processing, Internet-based system-to-system communication, and message transaction queuing and logging, respectively.
Security is of great importance as organizations share information between business partners over traditionally unsecured communication links, such as the Internet. With public key integration built in to the Windows 2000/BizTalk Server 2002 environment, secured PKI transactions can ensure both privacy as well as integrity of information between trading partners.
Building B2B transactions on industry standards not only provides ease of development and product integration, but also provides a common communication transport mechanism between business partners. Many organizations set up business systems and then the communication links are delayed as security officers for the business trading organizations scrutinize the desired opening of firewall “ports” between sites to share information. When proprietary systems are built, they frequently use proprietary communication systems. However, because BizTalk Server uses standards, such as SMTP, PKI, HTTP, and HTTPS, most internetworking infrastructures already support those data formats to pass through firewalls. Simply add a BizTalk Server to the firewall filter list, and the BizTalk Server system will be able to share information with a trading partner.
Decreasing the Cost of Transactions
All organizations want to decrease their cost of transactions, and BizTalk Server can minimize costs because of its use of off-the-shelf Microsoft/Intel technologies over existing Internet-based connection links. Unlike traditional EDI systems that require transactions to be conducted through a Value Added Network (VAN), typically over dedicated lease line or frame relay connections (or slow dial-through systems), BizTalk Server can provide communications with a business partner directly over the Internet. For a more secure connection, the trading partners can set up a Virtual Private Network (VPN) that would create a dedicated tunnel over the Internet to facilitate B2B communications.
As noted earlier, because transactions are automated, the entry costs (both in terms of manual data entry, as well as the cost of incurring typographical errors when information is manually entered) impact efficiencies and typically increase the cost of transactions. With the automated system built-in to BizTalk Server, entry costs decrease due to the elimination of manual data entry systems and the costs associated with entry errors.
Finally, because BizTalk Server runs on a single off-the-shelf Microsoft/Intel platform computer system, the cost of purchasing and maintaining proprietary specialized communication devices is greatly minimized.
Increasing Market Share and Business Opportunities
As an organization leverages the capabilities of BizTalk Server, it also lowers its costs and increases its flexibility on communication standards that ultimately increase the organization's capability to establish more business partnerships and conduct more B2B transactions. This increase in market share and business opportunities, through the use of standards and Internet communications, also provides the organization the capability to expand its reach to new geographies with little increase in transaction overhead. Typically as an organization increases its market reach, it linearly if not exponentially increases its overhead in incremental cost of doing business in the larger geography.
Enabling Marketplace Competitiveness
When properly implemented and integrated into external as well as internal business and application environments, BizTalk Server makes an organization more easily accessible to more businesses and people than before. The lowering of costs and the increase in market share enables the organization to attract more business opportunities and thus creates an economy of scale that improves marketplace competitiveness.
Additionally, the lower cost of transactions means that scalability costs are more likely to be linear than exponential thus increasing business without a commensurate increase in transaction overhead costs. Because BizTalk provides a single source for both external and internal B2B and application-sharing functionally, the use of the technology can also help an organization scale down its operation or increase its growth depending on the organization's needs. Many times, an organization loses a client and is forced to make drastic cuts in overhead allocated to manage and maintain the infrastructure needed to support the business the client transactions used to require. However, with BizTalk Server, because a single server can provide a host of services to multiple business partners, it enables the organization to decrease its market share dynamically while retaining the same support mechanisms and resources because system components and operational overhead have already been taken into account with the implementation of BizTalk Server.
Improving Business Relationships
As an organization lowers its costs, improves its response times, provides more flexibility on the input and output format of information, uses a host of industry standards, and has the capability to make input/output changes quickly, the end result leads to an improvement in business services and business relations with its clientele. Customer service is built on quality, reliability, competitive costs, and fast response time, all the business relationship and business value proposition tasks of an organization.