Microsoft’s support to BizTalk 2004, running on an old 2003 server

A BizTalk Server solution

I just wanted to write a letter of appreciation for the people you have working at TwoConnect in regards to an issue we experienced last week and the great support we received.

One of our critical internal processes is currently utilizing Microsoft’s BizTalk 2004, running on an old 2003 server. Unfortunately, this process had fallen victim to “technological inertia” and had been overlooked for an upgrade for a long time. We finally spent time to research a replacement and were in the process of trying to implement it, when the BizTalk 2004 process started to crash giving only one pretty generic error message.

Everything we knew how to do for BizTalk 2004 (clean up processes and files, reboots, shutting down unnecessary services, etc.) proved to be a failure and we were looking at a very lengthy and manual process of either trying to do this process manually (and with additional manpower) or try to force a migration over to a newer platform (that proved to be unsuccessful in the past). Microsoft’s support of BizTalk 2004 ended a very long time ago and gave no options. The frantic googling of the error message and issue provided no help.

In a last ditch attempt to find any help at all, we resorted back to trying to find any Microsoft partner that still supported BizTalk 2004 and we found your site on one of the first pages (Sorry, I wish I remembered what search words we used to help with your SEO). I felt confident after seeing that you were a certified Microsoft partner for a long time and specialized in BizTalk, so I clicked on the Contact Us page and prepared myself to just fill out the standard “contact us” form page in hopes that it actually goes somewhere, but saw the phone number and decided to call. Thinking I was just going to get an automated answering service (I believe it was after 5pm), I was surprised when someone answered. She was very professional, took my information and told me someone would contact me as soon as they could.

Figuring it will probably be the next day, at the latest, before I heard back from anyone, imagine my surprised when Rey Diaz called me just moments later. He proceeded to gather more and assure me that you all had the BizTalk experience and would do everything you could to resolve the issue.

Just a little while later, Rey had me in contact with the BizTalk Engineer, John Stephens. Even though it was later in the evening, John was able to quickly remote into our server and immediately started working on the issue. He provided us with a high level of confidence about his knowledge of BizTalk (I worked my share of years with system integration companies and know that sometimes the first available technician gets the call, not necessarily the most experienced. This was not the case). John was quickly able to figure out what was causing the issues and had the scripts and backend processes handy to get it cleared up. I feel he also went above and beyond in his support, because instead of just waiting for the processes to finish what they needed to do, he started verifying if we had the appropriate/recommended housecleaning SQL tasks, etc. and proceeded to show me what needed to be done, etc.

I don’t know if TwoConnect has an employee recognition program, but if you do, I would like to put my recommendation in for John. Actually, would like to also recognize the other people involved with the call process: Rey and even the dispatcher who initially took my call. The level of professionalism and quick response to a call was very impressive.

Microsoft should be honored to have your company as a partner.

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