Evaluation of BizTalk360 : From a business value perspective

Sammanfattning: This thesis was requested by Solution Xperts in Linköping and is an evaluation of the software BizTalk360, which is a add-on to the very well known application integration software BizTalk Server. One problem that many face with BizTalk Server is how to handle the post-implementation operations of their implementation. Referring to such factors as monitoring and security for instance. The built-in tools are very limited and lack a variety of functions that are very desirable. BizTalk360 tries to solve this. In order to evaluate the value that BizTalk360 brings to its users, two factors were taken into account. How important are the functions provided for the company? And how difficult would these be to implement independently?. After testing the BizTalk360 core functions and features and also implementing a representative function of BizTalk360, everything learnt were presented to group of experienced BizTalk Sever developers in order to receive estimates regarding their individual importance and theoretical implementation time. The importance of the functions proved quite minor. The platform offers a lot of smart solutions to various problems but these wont see enough use to justify the cost. The difficulty of implementing a similar platform were also estimated to be quite low, only time consuming. Estimated to take (through average) 653 man hours.