BAM Usage in BizTalk

Kevin Smith has a nice post on using BAM to create a tracking portal.  I've talked with many customers about just this type of portal and usage for BAM.  Some customers hear about BAM but have gotten the marketing message that it is all about the business use.  The perception, from what I have seen, is that BAM is only for business users.  Developers and IT Pros are not being told how useful BAM can be useful for them. 

 

The case for using BAM as an operational tracking and reporting store is strong.  The data provided by HAT is certainly helpful, but does not contain contextual information about your business process to help in either diagnosing problems or understanding business flow.  In addition, BAM truly gives you data in the context of a business process, regardless of how many orchestrations, pipelines or custom components your process encompasses.  With SQL Reporting Services, viewing the collected data is a snap! 

 

So, what are other people seeing out there?  Are you using BAM?  What business problems are you solving with it?  Do you use it for operational purposes, or only for business reporting?  Do you use the Tracking Profile Editor (TPE)?  If not, why not?