Updating the Traditional Pipeline

The pipeline that VetMall.com integrates may be traditional, but the technologies it employs are anything but. VetMall is using BizTalk, an e-commerce framework based on Extensible Markup Language (XML) that makes it easy for organizations to integrate applications and do business over the Web regardless of platform, operating system, or underlying technology.
"It has been incredibly difficult for companies to easily conduct business over the Internet due to the lack of a single technical vocabulary for describing business data and processes," says Ken Liao, chief technology officer at VetMall. "When Microsoft came out with the whole idea of the BizTalk framework using XML documents, it was exactly what we needed for VetMall.com."
Although VetMall.com was in the development stage long before BizTalk came out, Desktop was quick to go with a new technology that mirrored its concept so completely. Says Liao, "We started hearing about the overall idea behind the BizTalk framework and BizTalk Server, and it just happened our direction coincided directly with Microsoft's concept of this product. It was a great match for us."