The Enterprise Service Bus as a hosted service a.k.a. The Internet Service Bus

As you might already know, the guys from the Connected System Division @ Microsoft just released the first CTP of Biztalk Services (available at http://labs.biztalk.net). This marks one important step in materializing the Software + Services vision that has been cooking in Redmond for quite some time.

There are several very interesting blog entries that explain the ISB concept and help you get started with consuming Biztalk Services. Among them, I highly recomend the posts of Clemens Vasters (read it here), John Shewchuk (read it here), and Dennis Pilarinos (read it here).

There are currently four main types of services available:

1. Biztalk Identity Services (http://identity.biztalk.net) - provide services for application identity and access control management
2. Biztalk Connectivity Services (http://connect.biztalk.net) - provide services for exposing services from behind a firewall or NAT (in a secure manner of course)
3. Biztalk ServiceBus Services (http://servicebus.biztalk.net) - provide services for creating loosely coupled applications with eventing (this one is coming soon)
4. Biztalk Workflow Services (http://workflow.biztalk.net) - provide workflow services (this one is coming soon too)

In case you'd like to get started with these services just go to http://labs.biztalk.net and get the Biztalk Services SDK which should put you on track very fast :)