Microsoft BizTalk Server vs. Splunk Application Performance Monitoring (APM)

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

Good for below cases 1. There is a front end and need to correlate data with front end data 2. multiple microservices and need to check the health of each system 3. correlate data from various sources 4. Application performance is a key to be captured 5. application performance is a key metric.

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

• Detect and Troubleshoot, which allows team to eliminate errors.
• Dashboard creates a one stop location for environment health
• Provides visibility, access to logs and user data real time.

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

• I wish Splunk Application Performance Monitoring could integrate with packet capture and analysis tools and provide the integrated analysis results on each tier of the application

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

Splunk is a great tool for log mining. It is less time-consuming and easy to use. It provides high security, it has customisable dashboards. Furthermore, it acts as a search head, and it gives real-time status. It has the ability to collect data from any source and multiple sources, and it can correlate them.

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

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

It is good that the correlation analysis and the cause of the failure can be analyzed more extensively through the collection of many data. It is good because it provides a user interface (usability) well and can be used conveniently.
It is good because it can utilize anomaly detection through various AI-based ML models.

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

• It gave us more quicker alerts in a organize way to distribute to specific audience.
• Helped us to improve our uptime by getting pro-active alerts via emails
• More collaboration in a DevOps culture

Incentivized