I have spent the week at Microsoft TechEd 2006, and attended a very interesting BOF (Birds of a Feather) session yesterday, called “Creative Uses of Virtualization in the Development Lab”.  The session was facilitated by VMWare, which was a pleasant surprise, since Microsoft is a competitor in this field — but many companies Microsoft competes with are prominently featured here.

The best part was hearing how people are using the VMs:

• beta testing:  if a client agrees to participate in a beta test, they are shipped a complete virtual machine instance to run (using VMPlayer — which is available at no charge).  Aside from protecting the beta customer from installation and configuration, this allows the customer to send a snapshot of the entire environment (OS instance) along with a bug report
• maintaining legacy applications:  when a product needs to be supported for several years, there is a danger that other changes (development tools, operating systems at the company, drivers, DLLs, jars, whatever) will change and make it subsequently impossible to maintain.  One person related that his company creates a VM for a developer that contains everything to maintain and build a complete copy of the application (when it is “retired”), and tucks it away for future maintenance
• training:  This was not from the BOF, but from the huge HOLs (Hands on Labs) that surround the Expo floor here at TechEd.  When you type in the number of a lab, the software on the workstation copies a VM (Virtual PC this time) over and starts it up.  The VM is configured with everything needed for the lab:  tools, servers, test files.  This process takes maybe 90 seconds.  When you leave the VM goes away (your changes are not saved)
• Virtual Appliances:  VMWare maintains a repository of “virtual appliances” (VMs configured to do something, complete with an OS, usually Linux), that can be downloaded from VMTN (VM Technology Network).  Examples include a firewall, a “clean” (no cookies, keyloggers, etc) OS for doing home banking, an isolated browsing environment to let your kids loose in, etc. 
• Testing setups:  okay, not so novel, but worthwhile for complicated test environments, where you need database profiles, test data, comms setups, and so on.  The ability to reset and run with complete confidence that nothing has been messed up is something to think about.
• Demo environments:  as above with testing, except prospects are watching
• Production Troubleshooting:  often we cannot troubleshoot a problem in production because we need to get customers up and running ASAP.  If there is time to copy the file containing the VM image (assumption is your production is virtual), you can copy it, start up the virtual server again, and still have the “damaged” VM to troubleshoot with.

Check out the article from InformationWeek about Microsoft’s announcement down at UConnect. It may seem strange that Microsoft would add this capability at this time (BizTalk Server has supported EDI through software from Covast for years after all (Covast is also a GXS development partner), but this is part of some continuing excitement in the B2B space.

Companies have been doing some really exciting work in B2B, but not what was anticipated. Instead of embarking on a major overhaul to convert all of their X12 and EDIFACT (traditional EDI standards) to XML, companies have been applying BI and BPM tools to EDI streams, and working like crazy to achieve higher levels of automation with their supply chains.

This has led to people saying that EDI “won” the war, but this is also not entirely true. You need only look at the Global Data Synchronization Network or the exciting RFID work going on to realize that the “new” ground belongs to XML. What has happened is that the demand for systems that can handle traditional EDI and newer XML standards, with BI and BPM layers, are now very important.

Which brings us back to the Microsoft announcement. BizTalk Server 2006 is an exciting product, with strong intelligence and activity monitoring capabilities, and a completely refreshed BPM capability (with an emphasis on ease of use for business analysts). By adding in native support for EDI, they are strongly positioning BTS 2006.

With all of these capabilities, the only unmet challenge is enabling as many trading partners as possible, which is part of what the new strategic alliance between GXS and Microsoft is about.

Announcements like this by a major player like Microsoft illustrate both the important role of traditional EDI in B2B, and the ever increasing importance of B2B.