This is all I could find. It appears you have to order the eval copy from
MS. 60 day trial costs you 4.95.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/productinfo/trial/default.aspx
You need VS because BizTalk integrates with the IDE. One of the complaints
concerning the earlier versions of BizTalk is that it had too many
interfaces, so now everything runs through VS. Not to mention BizTalk is
built on the .Net framework and written in C#.
Lots of luck evaluating BizTalk. It's a great product if you can justify
the equally great cost. It does, however, have the ability to significantly
reduce your coding time and allow greater interoperability among disparate
systems, among other things.
If I were you, and maybe you've considered this already but, I would contact
an MS sales rep and see if they would foot the bill (or at least some
portion of it) for a POC. BT is a fairly complex product to just pick up
and start using.
The other thing I would do is try to educate your upper management on BT's
abilities. One of the easiest ways of doing that is watching a couple
webcasts. There are tons of them on BizTalk and even some directed at upper
management. Check out the following link (you'll probably be better served
starting with the On-Demand Webcasts) :
http://www.microsoft.com/seminar/events/webcasts/default.mspx
You can also check:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/nhp/default.asp?contentid=28000399
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Ryan
