Microsoft BizTalk Server vs. Trisotech Digital Enterprise Suite

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

In my experience, Trisotech Digital Enterprise Suite works well as a tool used by business analyts, process experts, and technology based teams who manage knowledge centrally. In my opinion, it does not work great as a fully fledged knowledge management system with wiki articles, decentralised knowledge management, and governance. Using Trisotech Digital Enterprise Suite with SharePoint, Confluence, or a similar tool would work better, however there are downsides to this approach.

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

• Business logic modelling
• Business process flows
• Business rules

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

• Ease of use
• Modern interface design
• Licensing and distrubution

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

Despite Trisotech Digital Enterprise Suite's great set of features, it's fit will depend on the structure of your business, how you operate, and more importantly - how you want to operate. For us it doesn't provide a complete solution, as we desire to decentralise knowledge management approach with a modern, easy to use system.

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

Trisotech Digital Enterprise Suite thrives as a process modelling tool, however, in my opinion, it does not compete with SharePoint, which remains a key platform in knowledge management due to it's modern design, ease of use, and ability to customise and manage permissions and sharing easily. I think Process Manager from Nintext also provides better tools for managing knowledge.

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

• Standardising processes
• Centralising business logic
• Modelling processess

Incentivized