BizTalk Server 2020 Announcement
After months of speculation and controversy following the INTEGRATE 2018 London event, Microsoft initially denied any plans for a vNext release of BizTalk Server. However, two weeks later, the Microsoft Integration team officially clarified the situation.
Finally, the long‑awaited good news arrived.
During his session at INTEGRATE 2019 London, Paul Larson officially announced that BizTalk Server 2020 would be released by the end of CY 2019. This announcement brought renewed confidence to the Microsoft Integration community and to customers who continue to view the Microsoft Integration Stack as one of the strongest solutions on the market.
Why BizTalk Server 2020 Matters
One of the main drivers behind this new release is platform alignment. As expected, Microsoft focused on ensuring BizTalk Server remains compatible with modern infrastructure and development tools.
As a result, BizTalk Server 2020 will support the following platforms and technologies:
- SQL Server 2019 and SQL Server 2017
(SQL Server 2016 support was not fully confirmed at the time) - Windows Server 2019
(and, most likely, Windows Server 2016) - .NET Framework 4.8
- Visual Studio 2019
- Azure IaaS virtual machines
What This Means for Customers
Most importantly, this release confirms Microsoft’s continued commitment to BizTalk Server. It reassures organizations that rely on BizTalk for mission‑critical integrations that the product remains relevant, supported, and aligned with current enterprise platforms.
In addition, customers can modernize their environments without being forced into immediate cloud‑only migrations, while still benefiting from tighter Azure integration.
📝 One-Minute Brief
Announces the upcoming release of BizTalk Server 2020, highlighting platform alignment, built‑in feature packs, and expanded Azure integration capabilities expected by the end of CY 2019.
What Can We Expect from BizTalk Server 2020?
Looking ahead, BizTalk Server 2020 brings far more than just platform alignment. In fact, one of the biggest wins is for customers running BizTalk Server Standard Edition.
Starting with this release, BizTalk Server 2020 includes all BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Pack features built in. As a result, these capabilities are now available across all editions, without additional installations or limitations.
Built‑In Cloud and Hybrid Adapters
To begin with, BizTalk Server 2020 introduces a rich set of cloud adapters, making hybrid integration scenarios easier to implement and maintain:
- Logic Apps adapter: Enables seamless connectivity with Azure Logic Apps, allowing you to extend on‑premises integrations into the cloud.
- Service Bus adapter: Allows sending and receiving messages through Azure Service Bus.
- Event Hubs adapter: Enables integration with Azure Event Hubs for high‑throughput event ingestion.
- Office 365 Mail adapter: Supports sending and receiving emails using Office 365.
- Office 365 Schedule adapter: Allows creating and updating calendar appointments.
- Office 365 Contact adapter: Enables managing contacts and groups in Office 365.
- Blob Storage adapter: Allows reading and writing binary data directly to Azure Blob Storage.
API Management and DevOps Improvements
In addition to new adapters, BizTalk Server 2020 improves integration lifecycle management:
- API Management connectivity: Makes it possible to publish orchestration endpoints directly to Azure API Management.
- Deployments with VSTS: Enhances Application Lifecycle Management by enabling automated deployments using Visual Studio Team System (VSTS).
Security and Compliance Enhancements
From a security perspective, BizTalk Server 2020 introduces several important improvements:
- Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.2: Full support for TLS 1.2 across all adapters and accelerators.
Older protocols such as SSL, TLS 1.0, and TLS 1.1 can be disabled. - SQL Server Always Encrypted support: Enables reading and writing encrypted columns using the WCF‑SQL adapter, via the
ColumnEncryptionSettingbinding property. - Database backup to Azure Blob Storage: Allows BizTalk databases to be backed up directly to Azure Blob Storage using the default backup job.
Monitoring, Tracking, and Analytics
Moreover, BizTalk Server 2020 significantly enhances observability:
- Advanced scheduling: Provides more precise recurrence options for receive locations, including time zones, months, weeks, and days.
- Application Insights integration: Enables sending BizTalk tracking data to Azure Application Insights for deeper performance analysis.
- Power BI operational data feed: Allows reporting and visualization of BizTalk tracking data using Power BI dashboards.
- Tracking data to Azure: Supports exporting tracking data to Application Insights or Event Hubs.
Management and Administration Enhancements
Finally, BizTalk Server 2020 introduces new management capabilities:
- REST Management APIs: Enables managing nearly all BizTalk artifacts via RESTful APIs, including:
- Applications
- Hosts and Host Instances
- Send Ports and Receive Locations
- Orchestrations, Schemas, and Maps
- EDI artifacts such as Agreements, Parties, Batches, and Policies
- Read‑only administration mode: Adds new privileges that allow administrators to view configurations without modifying them.
- Enterprise Single Sign‑On 2020: Includes improvements to the SSO subsystem.
And, of course, additional enhancements are expected, even if they were not publicly disclosed at the time.
Along with BizTalk Server 2020, we will also have a new version of Host Integration Server (HIS) with the same platform alignment as BizTalk Server, but also with:
- IBM platform alignment:
- IBM z/OS 2.3
- IBM I V7R3
- IBM MQ 9
- IBM CICS 5.4
- IBM IMS V15
- IBM BD2 V12
- Enterprise Single Sign-On 2020
- Software Development Kit
With this release, Microsoft continues to deliver a mature, reliable, and stable integration server that honors the trust of the thousands of customers who run their mission-critical business processes on BizTalk Server.
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Awesome Sandro, its always great to hear from you 🙏. However here are my 2 cents the new age mantra is – all that glitters is gold. Microsoft especially in context of BizTalk needs to understand this. We have been around for some time and a lot of customers consider BizTalk legacy now. This perception has to be changed and there is a need for fresh marketing strategy around this product. Or we ll loose market footprint(intact we already are), especially after one of the biggest middleware competitors (in a perceived way) sales force aquired mule soft , they are putting in tons of money on mimicking what BizTalk has but very cleverly under a diffirent wrap.
We depend on Biztalk Deployment Framework for our many applications. While not appreciated so much by microsoft, it changes 4 hour deploys to 20 minutes. So any idea who might take on compatibility for BTDF?
Hi Sandro
Do you know if MS finally going to have SSO support for the MS native SFTP adapter in BizTalk?
Unfortunately, I don’t have this information. Don’t know if they will have this feature available.
Hi Sandro,
Do you know if there is a beta/CTP version of BizTalk 2020 available ? We would like to play around with this version and plan to upgrade as soon as it is publicly available.
There isn’t any beta/CTP version of BizTalk 2020 available at the moment.
Sandro – Will licensing change for the new version?
As far as I know, there is no plan to change the licensing model. BizTalk Server 2020 will be also licensed exclusively in the Per Core licensing model as it is in 2016
Hi,
Any news as to a release date for BizTalk Server 2020? End “of this year” is coming quite quickly 🙂
Hello,
Any news on Biztalk2020? it is supposed to be released by end of 2020….
BizTalk Server 2020 was released January 15th !
See: http://www.biztalkgurus.com/blogs/msft-biztalk-integration/biztalk-server-2020-released/
Hi Sandro,
According to Microsoft’s official documentation, BizTalk 2020 supports .Net 4.7. No mention of .Net 4.8 🙁
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/biztalk/install-and-config-guides/hardware-and-software-requirements-for-biztalk-server-2020
Dear Sandro,
Do you have any news on SSO Application Configuration Tool for BizTalk Server 2020? SSO Application Configuration is still encountering the old key/value visibility issue.
Hi Sandro
Do you have plans of updating Scheduled Adapter to be used with BizTalk 2020?
Very soon, just need to find a little time. However, due to this COVID-19 situation, both me and my wife we are working from home with 3 kids doing home school. Not a perfect scenario for finding too much free time to dedicate to all of these contributions.
But the Scheduled Adapter is in my top priority.
Thank you very much Sandro.
Hi Sandro,
Hope you are doing good.
I found below link for downloading BTDF for BizTalk 2020. It says works with “Azure Devops server or services”. The previous version of downloads use to have works with visual studio option. Bit confused here. Could you please help!
Thanks and Regards,
Dileep N
Has anyone used the BDTF framework (V5.8)for BizTalk 2020.