What is Supply Chain Management?

In the previous post we discussed about BizTalk being used in Supply Chain Management Solutions, but people who haven't got any exposure to supply chain management domain may be wondering what exactly we are dealing with here. Lets have a small heads up on SCM.

Supply Chain Management

We are living in a world where businesses are interdependent and every business is seeking one or more commodity or service from another. Now, lets take a scenario where Business 'A' is manufacturing 'containers' and they need to keep track of the containers which get out of their depot, Businees 'B' manufacturing a soft drink is using those containers from Business 'A'. Now, the containers filled with Soft Drink cans are being sent to Business 'C' say 'WalMart' which would eventually sell the soft drinks. Now, if there can be central system which could track where a particular container is for all the 3 business starting from the moment when the container left the Depot and came back to it for cleaning or for any other purpose after completing the cycle through Business 'B' and Business 'C'. That system can be called as a Supply Chain Management system, which could keep a track of a supply in the entire chain for all the Businesses involved.

Integral part of Supply Chain Management Solutions

Over the years developing Supply Chain Management solution has been a challenge for the programmers around the globe, middlewares like "SeeBeyond" did help a bit but was not as robust and flexible as BizTalk, in addition it was quite hard to configure "SeeBeyond". Because other middlewares were developed in non-microsoft technologies, they added to the pain. Then came BizTalk Server which was around for quite a while but didn't get popular before version 2006 R2 came into the market. Version 2006 R2 had support for .net 3.0, adding support for WCF - Windows communication. Not developers have the flexibility that instead of exposing their web services as conventional asmx services they could opt for WCF Services. All and all we have more power in hands,we can apply our brains in thinking "what to do?" rather "how to do?" .. keep Bizzing ...!

What Is BizTalk Server 2006 R2?

Related Links
•Introducing BizTalk Server 2006 R2
Related Sites
•Visual Studio 2005
•SQL Server 2005
•Common Engineering Roadmap

With the introduction of BizTalk Server in 2000, Microsoft sparked a revolution in the integration industry proving that integration and process automation technology didn’t have to be prohibitively expensive or hard to use. Today, over 7,000 organizations rely on BizTalk Server to integrate systems and automate processes across global supply chains. With the introduction of the fifth full version, BizTalk Server 2006 R2 builds upon the Business Process Management and SOA/ESB capabilities in prior releases to help organizations extend core process management technologies even further with new capabilities like native support for Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), AS2 and RFID, and close alignment with the upcoming releases of 2007 Microsoft Office system and Windows Vista, including key .NET Framework technologies such as Windows Workflow Foundation and Windows Communication Foundation.
BizTalk Server 2006 R2 puts real-time, end to end supply chain management within reach of every customer, spanning systems, people and processes, both within and across organizational boundaries. BizTalk Server 2006 R2 empowers customers to make informed business decisions with real-time data from geographically dispersed, yet integrated systems – putting you one step ahead of the competition. All this coupled with the confidence of an enterprise class infrastructure, regardless of your company size. Your Business, Connected.

Download BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Trial Version
Learn about the new enhanced capabilities of the next version of BizTalk Server including, Service Oriented Architecture and Web Services, Business Process Management, and Business to Business Integration (integrated support for EDI and comprehensive RFID platform infrastructure).

With the introduction of the fifth full version, BizTalk Server 2006 R2 builds upon the Business Process Management and SOA/ESB capabilities in prior releases to help organizations extend core process management technologies even further with new capabilities like native support for Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), AS2 and RFID and close alignment with the releases of 2007 Microsoft Office system and Windows Vista, including key .NET Framework technologies such as Windows Workflow Foundation and Windows Communication Foundation.