This document discusses using BizTalk to support enterprise application integration (EAI) and business activity monitoring (BAM) as strategic assets rather than just cost centers. The objectives are to ensure transaction throughput, scalability, and monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) important to business processes. The next steps outlined are to build a system to support the vision, analyze baseline performance data to identify pain points, and plan short and long-term BizTalk infrastructure upgrades.

1. BizTalk in the context of BusinessNow that you have BizTalk… what’s next?

2. Executive Summary Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) and Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) can be a Strategic Asset for Business instead of just another Cost Center. The objective is to ensure transaction throughput & scalability based on specific Key Performance Indicators (KPI) important to the business process. The main drivers in this context are– Keep the lights ON - Minimum Planned/Unplanned downtime Keep the cost Down - Near zero defects Do more with less - Robust runtime platform with real-time monitoring The basic components of the solution that support a mission critical business process are – Integration: EAI component mapping to Business processes and steps within Audit: Financial data integrity and accuracy checks between applications and processes Dashboard: BAM component mapping to Application health as well business transaction KPIs Next 3 steps Build system and/or structure to support the VISION. Demonstrate quick wins like error handling improvements, multi part orchestration design, and interface audit implementation etc. Nothing shows success as success! Analyze business process performance baseline data and pinpoint the primary pain area to address first. Identify and prioritize the business processes that will have maximum benefit from the process/integration improvement efforts Plan a short term and long term BizTalk infrastructure – hardware/software upgrade, scaling etc. Implement influence strategy and communication plan, responsibility grid to mobilize commitment at multiple levels Gartner: The idea is to create a Foundation and a Feedback loop between process performance data and the process model so that corrective actions can improve operational performance and enhance customer satisfaction at real time

5. Configure Integration End-points

6. Configure Application Integration

8. Interface Audit Reports

9. Monitor Business Activity

11. BizTalk Requirements Checklist – Getting Started or Resume… Functional requirements What is the expected response time? What is the expected volume/load? What are the FIFO requirements? What are the priority messaging requirements? What about throttling scenarios? What are the orchestration requirements? Service requirements What are the retry requirements? What are the asynchronous message processing capability requirements? What are the scalability and performance expectations? What are considerations of end-points like 3rd party applications being the bottle neck? What are the application or client specific business rules? What are the persistence points in the data flow? What are the compensation requirements? Support and monitoring requirements How will the system health and activity be monitored? What about message specific monitoring? What are the error handling requirements? How will you differentiate between data and infrastructure issues? What are the error and message lookup requirements? What are the message resubmit requirements? What about alerts and notifications? What is the business rules maintenance requirements and strategy? What are the administration, configuration, and maintenance requirements? Other requirements What are the gap analysis findings in case you are migrating from a legacy system? Can SSIS or other tool be used instead? If not what are the reasons? What is the “to be process map” with roles and responsibilities? What project management tools are in place to do the project? Line of Business/ Interface checklist List of published APIs along with the business function and/or capability What other APIs are expected in next version? List of APIs used grouped by integration technologies like DTS/SSIS, BizTalk, WS, .NET remoting etc.