Microsoft added this week workflow capabilities to BizTalk Services, the company's platform-in-the-cloud project for SOA and business process management.  

 

The R12 Community Technology Preview for BizTalk Services, the twelfth version of the project, offers workflow enabling service orchestration from the cloud. These services can connect to enterprise systems or to systems running anywhere on the Internet.

 

Featured in R12 are a hosted Windows Workflow Foundation runtime and Web services messaging. Users could, for example, set up an automated process that uses Web services to provide pricing information to a partner, said Steven Martin, senior director of product management for the Microsoft Connected Systems Division. "The workflow technology allows me to define the interaction between those services," he said.