Microsoft BizTalk Server vs. Mirantis Kubernetes Engine

BizTalk is well suited as middleware. Where you wish to translate an input file into an output file and send it to some endpoint. In our case, we used it to convert and send files to SAP. In many ways, it very flexible, and you can do almost anything you want with it. In many ways, it's a better solution than your SAP XI or PI as middleware, since it's much less expensive, and allows you do interface with non-SAP systems.

Incentivized

[Mirantis Cloud Native Suite (Docker Enterprise)] is the most advanced tool till now, which works as a VMs
and separates any single application from the dependencies. Also, this tool is
helping me in the agile development of the processes. It is strongly recommended to
almost all major organizations.

Incentivized

• It is very user friendly. Users can change rules during run time and change workflow.
• Huge capacity for queueing messages. It supports all types of adapters like Oracle, Salesforce, SMTP, FTP, etc. Also users can built custom adaptors.
• If users want to dynamically deploy their solution without any downtime, this is a perfect solution. BizTalk will be a good fit, especially for public-facing websites.
• Well-proven in the market. I used it when developing a website for Virgin Trains, catering more than 800K user requests per day.
• Helps in load balancing.

Incentivized

• Containers - Docker is the go-to when using Containers, which are super useful if you need an environment that works both for Windows and Linux
• Efficiency - Docker is very lightweight and doesn't demand too much from your CPU or server
• CI/CD - Docker is excellent for plumbing into your build pipeline. It integrates nicely, is reliable, and has an easy set up.

Incentivized

• Microsoft BizTalk is over engineered for some situtations
• Microsoft BizTalk can be frustrating to use as it forces you to use the GUI as opposed to code
• Microsoft BizTalk is very resource intensive to create integrations

Incentivized

• Containers are often opaque - if a container doesn't work out of the box, it's messy to fix.
• Logging is complexified by the multiple containers and logs are often not piped to places you expect them to be.
• Networking is complexified due to internal port mapping between containers, etc.

Incentivized

BizTalk will always be required at this hospital.

Incentivized

I gave a 7 because this product BizTalk does need time and training to get familiar with the usability and features, it is not that easy to use.

Incentivized

Docker's CLI has a lot of options, and they aren't all intuitive. And there are so many tools in the space (Docker Compose, Docker Swarm, etc) that have their own configuration as well. So while there is a lot to learn, most concepts transfer easily and can be learned once and applied across everything.

Incentivized

BizTalk Server has been supported for more than 15 years. It is well proven in the market. Microsoft has provided excellent support with technical issues.

Incentivized

The community support for Docker is fantastic. There is almost always an answer for any issue I might encounter day-to-day, either on Stack Overflow, a helpful blog post, or the community Slack workspace. I've never come across a problem that I was unable to solve via some searching around in the community.

Incentivized

Make sure you have everybody and all depts. On board during testing on test server.

Incentivized

BizTalk was selected here mainly because it is easy to integrate to a .NET application (most of them are Web Service, WCF SOAP, WCF REST and Web API) and many backend databases are Microsoft SQL Server. Another benefit is that the monitoring job is easy to set up and centralize with other .NET application monitoring jobs.

Incentivized

We've used XAMPP, PHPmyAdmin and similar local environments (our app is on PHP). Because of how easy you can change the configuration of libraries on PHP and versions (which is SO painful on XAMPP or other friendly LAMP local servers) we are using Docker right now. Also, being sure that the environment is exactly the same makes things easier for developing.

Incentivized

• A positive impact has been the quicker turnaround time of a part request and that part showing up in SAP using Biztalk as middleware.
• A somewhat negative impact has been the somewhat insufficient error logging/message capture settings that Biztalk provide. This has caused occasional delays when attempted to create parts for the business.
• A somewhat negative impact has been the need to have a specialized developer who understands Biztalk to troubleshoot issues with the Biztalk and SAP interaction when creating parts, and when adding new fields to the parts.

Incentivized

• Docker has made it possible for us to deploy code faster, increasing the productivity of our development teams.
• Docker has made it possible for us to decentralize our build and release system. This means that teams can deploy on their own schedule and our dev ops team can concentrate on building better tools rather than deploying for the teams
• Docker has allowed us to virtualize our entire development process and made it much simpler to build out new data centers. This, in turn, is significantly increasing our ROI by providing a path forward for internationalization.

Incentivized