When you desire to realize how Microsoft is differentiating its Software+Services (S+S) strategy differs from Software Like a Services (SaaS), look no further Microsoft's recently announced BizTalk Companies. BizTalk Companies include: BizTalk Identity Solutions provide authentication, access control and federated identity based on the WS-Trust specification and Windows CardSpace BizTalk Relay Providers facilitate the traversal and bridging of physical networks, enabling high-fidelity interconnection between cooperating systems for cross-organizational messaging behind firewallsBizTalk ServiceBus Services, or ESB companies, are for creating loosely coupled applications BizTalk Workflow Services provide a hosted instance of Windows Workflow Foundation On April 24, Microsoft moved BizTalk solutions out of its live.labs.com incubation lab and into the labs.biztalk.net testing world. The first release of BizTalk Providers isn't considered a full-fledged beta; it's a Community Technology Preview (CTP) pre-beta release. In Microsoft's S+S taxonomy, there are three tiers of companies. Microsoft Connected Systems Division Director of Product Management Steve Martin explains these three tiers succinctly in this blog posting: Building Block – The raw building block capabilities to enable developers to build interesting solutions (or composite apps) Attached – Providers that feed into the premise software program e.g. Exchange Hosted Providers (security, anti-spam, archiving), Windows Live Update Finished – Providers built for delivery over the internet. e.g. Dynamics CRM Live, Salesforce.com Martin puts these hosted, "in-the-cloud" BizTalk Services into the "building block" category. They are meant to be a complement to Microsoft's on-premise BizTalk integration server. He explains: "We see BizTalk Services as a complement to 'traditional' BizTalk Server uses on premise. As you will need to coordinate SOA on a broader scale beyond the organization, we see the introduction of hosted solutions as one way to help assistance federation of business process,
Windows 7 Serial, messaging, and identity across boundaries. Over time, we want to ensure that BizTalk Server customers will be able to easily use the cloud solutions in conjunction with their premise technology." Expect to see Microsoft announce more "building block" services inside the not-too-distant future. Maybe even the long-awaited Microsoft storage in the cloud companies will finally make their debut….