BIZTALK CUSTOMER SOLUTION
Portum AG
Published: August 2001
Portum AG Overcomes Integration
Challenges Quickly and Easily with BizTalk
Server 2000
By combining Internet-based applications with consulting services,
Portum AG helps its clients save money when shopping for expensive
products or large quantities of products. The company offers online
auctions, requests-for-quotation, as well as individual procurement
solutions for enterprises and virtual marketplaces.
After facilitating transactions totaling almost $500 million in the year 2000,
Portum AG built a central technological platform for integrating external
marketplaces and other applications into its internal system. To meet its
integration challenges, Portum chose Microsoft® BizTalk™ Server 2000—a
further extension of its commitment to Microsoft .NET Enterprise Servers.
Company Overview
Portum AG is Europe's leading neutral intermediary and provider for strategic sourcing and
negotiation solutions for enterprises and marketplaces. The company helps its clients to save
money when buying expensive products or large quantities of products by using its auction
marketplace. Portum offers buyers, sellers, traders, and communities tailored auctions and
trading platforms. The company is Europe’s leading sourcing solution provider for enterprises and
marketplaces, and offers Internet-based, business-to-business (B2B) buying and selling
solutions.
Through a combination of easy-to-use, state-of-the-art Internet-based applications and tailormade consulting and technical services, Portum increases the performance of industrial buyers
Solution Overview
Profile
Portum offers Internet-based,
business-to-business buying and
selling solutions to enterprises and
marketplaces. Its Internet-based
applications, combined with its
consulting services, provide its clients
with a way to save money when
purchasing high-cost items or
purchasing items in large quantities.
Because it needed to integrate its
platform with other business
participants, Portum decided to build
a central integration platform—
Portum BizGate. The company chose
to build its solution using Microsoft
BizTalk Server 2000.
Scenario
Business-to-business
Line-of-business
Microsoft Technologies/Products
Used
Microsoft BizTalk Server 2000
Microsoft Windows 2000
Microsoft Visual Studio.NET Beta 2
Microsoft .NET Framework Beta 2
Microsoft SQL Server 2000
Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server
Benefits
BizTalk Server 2000 has provided
Portum with an effective, fast, and
easy way to meet its integration
challenges. With BizTalk
Orchestration, Portum has been able
to coordinate the long-running
transactions and processes between
its clients and its internal systems.
and sellers in the strategic sourcing and procurement process. The product offering includes
online auctions and request-for-quotations (RFQ) as well as individual procurement solutions for
enterprises and virtual marketplaces.
Portum tallied trade turnover amounting to € 0,5 billion ($492 million) in the business year 2000.
This put the company well ahead of its original expectations and makes Portum the undisputed
This allows external applications to
be attached to a logical business
process as well as Portum’s Internet
Trading Platform (ITP) and the
internal customer resource
management system.
market leader for B2B auctions not only in Germany, but also in all of Europe. BASF, Bayer, and
Volkswagen are just a few examples of Portum’s industry-leading clientele.
Business Challenge
Portum has secured its position as a successful applications provider for the European B2B and
supplier relationship market. Rapidly growing cooperation between partner companies required
seamlessly integrating the Portum platform with other business participants. So the company
developed a central technological platform for integrating external marketplaces and other
applications into the internal system. Its target was to offer appropriate solutions in the shortest
possible time frame.
Solution
BizTalk Server 2000 is an integral part of a new Portum product called BizGate. The function of
BizGate is to coordinate business processes between Portum’s systems, e-marketplaces, and
enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Portum is using BizTalk Orchestration—a new
technology for creating and orchestrating business processes that span time, organizations,
applications, and people.
With BizTalk Orchestration, the long-running transactions and processes between Portum and its
clients are coordinated. BizTalk Server 2000 supplies the infrastructure and tools, which enable
the secure exchange of Extensible Markup Language (XML) documents between applications via
the Internet or Portum’s internal communications system. This allows external applications to be
attached to a logical business process as well as Portum’s Internet Trading Platform (ITP) and
the internal customer resource management system—Onyx Employee Portal (OEP).
Why Portum Chose Microsoft
Portum decided to use Microsoft BizTalk Server 2000 because it knew that it was facing, and
would continue to face, complex integration issues. The company required application integration
tools that supported mixed-language and Web-based development. BizTalk Server 2000 and the
Microsoft .NET platform simplify developing solutions to meet such integration challenges.
The business logic components and Web services of the Portum BizGate were developed and
implemented using the Microsoft .NET Framework Beta2 and Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET Beta
2. The Web services form Portum’s interface to its trading partners. These services can be called
up directly either by HTTP GET or by another BizTalk-based server using messaging. The
components that image the mapping of clients in the individual systems are C# components
running in the .NET run-time background and are called up by the server running BizTalk.
Developing on the Microsoft platform allows for seamlessly integrating into the orchestration
engine of BizTalk Server 2000 and also guarantees quick time to market for new features and
easy maintenance of existing features.
Portum realized that security is important to its clients. By using the integrated security functions
of Microsoft Windows® 2000 Server, BizTalk Server 2000 ensures secure communication
between Portum and its trading partners with complete support of security protocols and codes
corresponding with industrial standards, such as Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), Secure Sockets
Layer (SSL), and HTTPS. Portum is confident that the integrity of data sent via various network
types is ensured.
Demand for its services has already exceeded Portum’s expectations. The company fully expects
future growth at a yet-unknown rate. Because BizGate represents an extension of Portum’s
commitment to .NET Enterprise Servers, Portum is confident that it has the flexibility and
scalability to handle the growing demand for its services.
The .NET Enterprise Servers are Microsoft’s comprehensive server family for quickly
building and managing an integrated, Web-enabled enterprise. Designed with
scaleable, mission-critical performance in mind, .NET Enterprise Servers deliver
reliability and manageability for the global, Web-enabled enterprise while delivering
on the best performance in its class. .NET Enterprise Servers are built from the
ground up for interoperability using today’s Web standards. With XML built in, .NET
Enterprise Servers attain the highest levels of integration and interoperability
available today. .NET Enterprise Servers also deliver the fastest time-to-market for
the Web-ready enterprise with production ready out-of-the box applications and the
world’s largest partner base of developers and software vendors.
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© 2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN
THIS SUMMARY. The information contained in this document represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation on the
issues discussed as of the date of publication.
Microsoft, BizTalk, the .NET logo, Visual Studio, and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft
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