Is BizTalk an ESB?

Question

hello,

I am looking into architectural patterns, Enterprise Services Bus (ESB) precisely. Upon reading this article Enterprise Integration, and with little to no experience I am wondering if BizTalk has is a ESB or is it just a EAI (Hub/Spokes or Bus)?

I found this NServiceBus and Biztalk, describing BizTalk as a central message broker.

Taking other ESB frameworks into account (NServiceBus and Rhino Service Bus). These frameworks have no central point to process messages.

Is Biztalk a EAI rather than an ESB?

Many thanks

Answer 1

BizTalk is certainly an ESB. EAI is more of a loose concept - BizTalk can certainly be deployed to support EAI, and it can also do a lot more.

Answer 2

BizTalk is more than an ESB but certainly fits the bill. This link is a little old, but answers your exact question.

EDIT: Here is a more-recent MS link that gets into specifics of implementation.

Answer 3

BizTalk is sold as an ESB, and the ESB toolkit augments this position: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=BC86CF1E-EF29-4B19-95F7-388F64555090&displaylang=en&displaylang=en

However, ESB itself is a very broad field http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_service_bus

IMHO there are a couple of areas of weak points

• BTS is more suited toward asynchronous processes than synchronous processes
• BTS is quite cumbersome when it comes to ease of versioning, management of MANY services

We use BTS for all EAI, Complex Business Process and Business Monitoring capabilities (around 100 or so orchestrations) but are looking at alternatives such as the MSE ahd NServiceBus for publication, versioning and management of our SOA services which run into the 1000s

HTH