Upcoming Speaking Engagements

I am happy to announce a couple of upcoming speaking events:

May 1st – Phoenix Connected Systems User Group in Tempe, Arizona

Introducing BizTalk 2013 and the new Cloud adapters

Microsoft recently released their 8th version of BizTalk called BizTalk Server 2013. One of the new capabilities in this version is the ability to use out of the box adapters when communicating with Windows Azure Service Bus endpoints and other Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions. In this session Kent will focus on exposing Line of Business services to the cloud using the new WCF-BasicHttpRelay, SB-Messaging and WCF-WebHttp adapters. This session will include some slides and lots of demos including exposing SAP information to a mobile device using these technologies.

May 6th/7th  - BizTalk Boot Camp in Charlotte, North Carolina

BizTalk 2013 - New cloud-based BizTalk Server adapters

This session will also focus on the new Cloud based adapters for BizTalk Server 2013.  I will be demonstrating some of the new capabilities found in the BasicHttpRelay, SB-Messaging and WCF-WebHttp adapters.

BizTalk 2013 CU1 has been released

The product team recently announced that BizTalk 2013 CU1 has been released. Within the CU there are 3 issues that are fixed:

1. User cannot perform certain database-related operations in BizTalk Server 2013
2. BAM tools cannot be configured in a multi-node BizTalk Server 2013 environment
3. The vertical scroll bar on the target schema does not work correctly when
   you use Visual Studio to design a BizTalk Server 2013 map

Personally, the only issue that I have noticed was item number 2.  It is nice to see this fixed as I was having a horrible time configuring BAM in a multi-server environment.  I definitely recommend installing the update.  This time around, Microsoft is delivering these updates via the Windows Update process.  Overall, the process is painless and rather convenient.  Windows Update will not automatically install these updates, they are something that you need to “opt in” for.

To install the update:

• Launch Windows Update

• Check for updates

• You should discover a BizTalk 2013 section as part of the Important Updates.  If you want additional info, click on the More Info link on right hand side.

 

Note: The KB article indicates A reboot is not required, however I was prompted for a reboot but that must be related to the Windows Server Updates.

BizTalk Monitoring Whitepaper is now available

For the past month and half, in my spare time, I have been working on a whitepaper that compares and contrasts System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) and BizTalk360. 

I have used both products extensively in my professional life and in order to remain objective within the paper I have driven my evaluation off of requirements.  These requirements are based upon my experience of managing the 24x7 operations of a BizTalk environment at a large Power Distribution company in Canada.

The paper can be downloaded from here and feel free to leave any comments that you may have below.

I would also like to thank Steef-Jan Wiggers for being a technical reviewer on this paper.  He provided me with some valuable feedback that increased the quality of the paper.