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Microsoft will depend on two major products for this push: Biztalk Server and Windows Communication Foundation (once known as Indigo). The former is in close relation to what other industry players are deeming an ESB (Enterprise Service Bus), while the latter will possibly enable Microsoft set itself apart from the competition, since it supersedes the concept of an ESB.

For what is essentially middleware software, the term ESB has been subject to various interpretations and incarnations, one of which is Biztalk Server. Under the hood, an ESB is used to broker any type of application request and dispatch it accordingly to any other type of application. The key here is any type, since a Bus type architecture is capable of masking a requesters platform details from a providers, and vice versa.

This is the main reason why products under the ESB namespace have adapters, orchestrators, pipelines and other such concepts, they are simply used to bridge as many platform disparities as can arise in the enterprise. But technically speaking, there is little difference between what can be achieved with Biztalk Server from Microsoft , JBI which is a Java specific ESB, or from some other niche company that offers an ESB product.

Windows Communication Foundation(WCF) on the other hand is not middleware, but an end package that will effectively provide many of the middleware functions currently offered by an ESB. How is this possible ? As its turns out, WCF will join all the distributed technologies provided by Microsoft under one same roof.

This means that WCF providers and/or requesters will be capable of communicating directly with applications built for .NET Remoting, ASP.NET Web Services (ASMX) or WS-* standards, without going through a middleware tier.

With WCF being slated to be big a part of Vista -- the up an coming Windows Operating System -- this will surely make WCF a prevalent platform for developing service orientated applications, with its close companion Biztalk Server, serving the needs of bridging non-Microsoft technology and filling SOA's needs while WCF becomes mainstream.

You can read a more extensive view on both of these platforms on two articles I wrote : BizTalk Server: Microsoft's SOA building block and WCF: Microsoft's 'newest' services way