BTS 2006

About a year ago, I started to install BizTalk Server 2004 on my daily production machine and stopped about 2 pages into the 107KB HTML "planning guide" that outlined various and sundry incantations needed to make your machine BTS ready.I blogged about it rather obliquely, but the Biztalkers all knew what product I was talking about.Rather than get me fired from the firm, they made "next, next, next" installation a high priority feature for their next release, BTS 2006.Word traveled fast within the big house after their recent all-hands meeting in which they hadtheir VP install the product on a virgin Windows box. When Beta 1 showed up on the internal corporate network, I decided to try it myself.After clicking setup.exe, I indeed was able to do "next, next, next" and get a working installation.About 15 seconds of up-front labor followed by just under 14 minutes of unattended cook time, and I had a working BTS installation up and running.I`ve said many times that the Biztalkers were way ahead of their time. With BTS 2006, I think the number of developers who`ll find this out first hand is going to go up dramatically.My hat is off to the folks in Building 1.