March 15, 1999
Microsoft takes aim at language barriers to business information
If we are to believe the story of the Tower of Babel, people have had trouble communicating with one another to accomplish common objectives for a long time. It is hard to build a tower to heaven if everyone is not speaking the same language.
Now, with the advent of Web-based businesses, companies are discovering a whole new set of language barriers. Even if we both speak English, our companies still may have difficulties doing business with one another online if I'm using SAP to run my business and you are using PeopleSoft.
These "data languages" comprise the vocabularies and grammars used to encode business data from accounting, manufacturing, purchasing, shipping, and payroll systems -- to name a few. And, with some exceptions (such as electronic data interchange, or EDI), there are very few common data languages in the business world.
Microsoft wants to change that, using an Extensible Markup Language-based business data language the company is calling BizTalk.
With the BizTalk standard, documents such as purchase orders, invoices, and product catalogs can be encoded in a common format, regardless of which applications generated and processed those documents.
For instance, I could use a BizTalk translation program to convert a purchase order generated by my accounting system into the common BizTalk format, then transmit it to your company, where it would be translated into a format compatible with your own applications. Bingo: instant Internet commerce.
Microsoft plans to offer a translation program called BizTalk Server later this year.
However, Microsoft's vision of BizTalk is bigger than simply facilitating business-to-business transactions. For Microsoft, this language also represents the possibility of more easily integrating applications within a single company -- for instance, linking enterprise resource planning and manufacturing programs.
Microsoft also sees BizTalk as the basis for online marketplaces where merchants would publish their product information in standard BizTalk formats. With a standard data format, the marketplace operator could more easily provide customers with services that cut across all of the vendors, such as a product-search form or a central shopping cart and payment-processing mechanism.
Like any business language, BizTalk will be worthwhile only if many people are using it. To foster its adoption, Microsoft has lined up a host of partners, and is also soliciting open comment on the language's specifications.
But Microsoft will start releasing BizTalk-based products, starting with BizTalk Server, long before the discussion about BizTalk's specifications are complete. This means that Microsoft will really be driving the definition of this language, despite appearances.
That may be OK -- after all, Latin worked reasonably well as a universal language in the Middle Ages, even though it was imposed by an autocratic church hierarchy.
The real question is whether Microsoft will be able to make BizTalk available widely enough, and with a low enough barrier to entry, to allow everyone to use it. If not, BizTalk will be limited to a monastic enclave of Microsoft devotees.
And if that happens, someone else will need to come up with a common language for the rest of the business world.
Will Microsoft succeed in creating a universal business language? Write to me at dylan@infoworld.com.
Dylan Tweney (dylan@infoworld.com)
has been covering the Internet since 1993. He
edits InfoWorld's intranet and Internet-commerce
product reviews.
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