To make up for the delay, Microsoft will ship 16 free application and technology adapters in its Enterprise and Standard editions of BizTalk. The company plans to release a second beta of BizTalk by year's end.

Peggi Douglass, director of IT for Retirement Systems of Alabama (RSA), said the potential BizTalk Server delay won't affect her organization, which had a low-risk migration plan in place.

The Montgomery-based pension fund manager is testing BizTalk Server code as part of Microsoft's Technology Adoption Program. It has already found the most recent beta release to be stable, easier to deploy and able to handle larger files than before, Douglass said.

Another company that likes BizTalk Server 2006 is Citigroup Inc., which is using it to create a digital authentication system for a large drug company, said Hilary L. Ward, director of global information services at the financial services company.

'We're able to move information with the least amount of intervention' using BizTalk's data transformation abilities, said Ward, who chose BizTalk over solutions from Citigroup's internal IT group and other software vendors. Ward said the integration of BizTalk with Visual Studio and SQL Server also saved time.