How "Oslo" relates to BizTalk

The Microsoft "Oslo" initiative is to provide a modeling (UML), management, and hosting platform for delivering model-driven service-oriented composite applications and S+S solutions; plus cloud computing through modeling.

The recently published BizTalk 2009 roadmap shows how "Oslo" features can be utilized also from BizTalk:

In fact, you won’t need to upgrade BizTalk Server to take advantage of "Oslo" – current BizTalk Server 2006 R2 or BizTalk Server 2009 customers can benefit from "Oslo" by being able to leverage and compose existing services into new composite applications. BizTalk Server today provides the ability to service enable LOB systems or trading partners as web services (using WCF supported protocols), which can be composed with the "Oslo" modeling technologies.

As the roadmap shows, WCF is the central enabler for connecting services from different systems into service-oriented solutions. WCF and WF are central to the new "Oslo" modeling tool and repository, allowing users to define and execute business processes (much like BPEL, XLANG). "Oslo" has a strong focus on enabling automation of business processes with strong support for humans as central actors in the processes (like BPEL4People, WS-HumanTask). Add the BAM interceptors for WCF and WF provided by BizTalk, and you have a platform that gives repeatability, consistency and visibility to your business process management efforts.

How "Oslo" relates to SOA

The upcoming Microsoft "Oslo" offering might be a bit vague to grasp, which I can readily understand. It has been perceived as a SOA implementation toolkit, but is rather focused on being a modeling (UML), management, and hosting platform for delivering model-driven service-oriented composite applications and S+S solutions; plus cloud computing through modeling. Read Loraine Lawson's Best Explanation of Oslo So Far for a rather typical experience.

Also look at the Oslo PDC sessions posted by Matt Winkler, on how "Oslo" is a service repository and a platform for both lifecycle management and hosting of services and processes. The service and process implementation tools in "Oslo" will be Visual Studio, WF, WCF, BizTalk, Zermatt, etc - and "Oslo" will be the one initiative to rule them all.

Directions on Microsoft on "Oslo": Messaging, Workflow Roadmap Announced (PDF)

Tools and platform for providing SOA and mashups

This week at the Microsoft SOA and BPM conference, two announcements were made that support the predictions of my last post (SOA: Top Two Tech Topics for 2008):

• Managed Services Engine v6.2 (service virtualization)
• The "Oslo" SOA and Software+Services platform for composite applications

"Oslo" is based on the BizTalk concept (BizTalk Server + BizTalk Services) supported by the .NET framework (WCF, WF), model-driven design tools, and of course a repository for service life-cycle management.

Read more about "Oslo" in the Directions on Microsoft article provided on Christian Weyer's blog.