In a letter to customers and partners, corporate vice president Ted Kummert said feed back indicated organizations wished to purchase portal and integration separately.
BizTalk Server 2004 is scheduled to launch on March 2.
We will not deliver a single Jupiter SKU in the 2004/2005 time frame, Kummert’s letter said, adding: Changing the package does not change our goals for interoperability between our portal and integration technologies.
Announced in November 2002, Jupiter was presented as a single, modular package integrating e-business products with overlapping functionality. Underpinning Jupiter was a single Business Process Execution Language (BPEL), a single set of development tools through Visual Studio.NET and integration with Office. Jupiter was to have been licensed per-processor, with customers paying more as they added a larger number of components.
Jupiter was Microsoft’s response to portal and integration offered by Java ISVs. Companies such as BEA Systems and IBM provide portal and integration under their own separate brands, that are both sold individually and as part of a platform with common security, management and development environments.
Such companies hope to take business away from point-solution vendors, providing either portal or just integration software with the promise of one-stop-shop approach.
Trina Seinfeld, Microsoft senior product manager, told ComputerWire, though, customers’ portal and integration projects are being treated separately, meaning they are unwilling to buy a single bundle.
Seinfeld said, though, Microsoft remained committed to the Jupiter vision adding the company would look at delivering on integrated integration and portal during the Longhorn time frame. Microsoft’s Longhorn operating system is expected by analysts in 2006, and is expected to produce a wave of related Windows product updates.
This article is based on material originally published by ComputerWire
