BizTalk Server is a "convert anything to anything" data integration / transforming
tool that works in real time. If you presently have two or more separate application
software systems in your company that do not "talk to each other" (they were not
designed to intergrate with each other), BizTalk can probably get them on speaking
terms.
So, for example, you may have one system for contact / customer relationship management,
and another for entering customer sales invoices. When a customer's contact information
changes, you end up making the change twice - once in your invoicing system, and
again in your contact management system. By integrating the two systems through
BizTalk, you only make the change in one system, and let BizTalk take care of updating
that change to the other system.
BizTalk was designed to handle very involved and complex real time integrations.
Integration logic is developed in a graphical design environment within the Visual
Studio IDE. A rich set of tools is available within this IDE to define transformations,
calculations, field mapping, scripting logic, and many other aspects of the integration.