Final answer:
BizTalk serves as a middleware for automating business processes, enabling communication between disparate systems within an enterprise. It differs from an ESB, which focuses on message routing and service interactions. BizTalk offers features like advanced scheduling, B2B communication, and integration with various systems and standards.
Step-by-step explanation:
The main purpose of BizTalk is not simply to provide an alternative communication mechanism to Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), but rather to act as a middleware product that enables companies to automate business processes through the use of adapters which are tailored to communicate with different software systems used in an enterprise. An ESB, on the other hand, offers a more flexible integration platform designed to connect applications using a service-oriented architecture. BizTalk facilitates the integration and management of automated business processes by allowing different applications to communicate through a common platform, even if they were originally designed to operate independently.
BizTalk streamlines the process of business integration by providing a range of features like advanced scheduling, b2b communication, message processing, and adapter integration. These features help in creating seamless communication channels within an organization, as well as with outside partners. While an ESB is also used for integrating different applications, it focuses on routing messages between services, transforming message formats and handling service interactions in a highly decoupled and dynamic manner.
In essence, BizTalk serves as a centralized orchestration tool that helps in the execution of complex business processes. It comes equipped with robust administrative tools for managing communications and transactions across various systems, plus it can be customized to support a wide range of industry standards and service protocols, including REST, SOAP, and more. Despite subtle overlaps in capabilities, BizTalk and ESB serve distinct purposes with BizTalk being a comprehensive tool built for enterprise-level business process automation and integration.