Upcoming Presentation: BizTalk Summit

 

BizTalk Summit 2015 -  April 13/14 London, England

The BizTalk Summit has become an annual, must attend, event in London.  This event is once again being organized by BizTalk360 in conjunction with Microsoft and the BizTalk Product group.  BizTalk360 has organized several large events and I expect this one to be even bigger than some of the other events they have hosted including the very successfully Integrate 2014 event they put on in Redmond in December 2014.

There have been over 250 attendees registered and you can still take advantage of some discounted tickets being available.  This event provides a great opportunity to learn and network with Integration experts from all over the world including Microsoft BizTalk and Service Bus product team members.  Please visit this link for registration information.

My buddy Sandro Pereira has put together a blog post called Top 7 reasons to attend BizTalk Summit 2015 which I thought was an interesting read.  You can take a look at that article here.

Recently, some of the BizTalk Summit session abstracts have been posted, including mine, so I thought I would update my blog as my the sessions were not public when I previously announced I would be speaking.

My topic is on API Management and more specifically Azure API Management.  You can read the details below.

Session Abstract

API Management Part 1 – An Introduction to Azure API Management

Building APIs is not just about technology. APIs enable many new business opportunities, but only if done correctly. As a result of lucrative opportunities, many Software vendors have emerged or pivoted from their SOA management roots to provide API Management capabilities. These API Management platforms provide the building blocks behind a successful API program.

In this session, Kent will introduce you to Microsoft’s Azure API Management platform by providing an overview that highlights its capabilities and the opportunities that emerge for organizations. As part of this presentation, Kent will demonstrate how developers can create their first API and discuss strategies for transforming existing services to leverage Azure API Management.

This presentation will consist of general guidance on API Management, an Azure API Management portal walk-through and demos that re-enforce the concepts that were introduced.

You may be asking yourself – “Part 1” well what is “Part 2”?  There will be another session that includes Azure API Management by Tomasso Groenendijk. We have been working together to ensure there is no overlap and he will pick up where I leave off from an Azure API Management capability perspective.  

Integrate 2014 Summit

 

Recently Microsoft and BizTalk360 have announced the continuation of the Global BizTalk Summit that is held annually in the greater Seattle area.  This year the event moves from downtown Seattle to Redmond and has been branded Integrate 2014. The event will take place December 3rd – 5th, 2014 on the Microsoft campus.  If you are interested in Microsoft Integration technologies, this is a must attend event. 

Based upon the current Session Schedule you will be exposed to:

• New BizTalk Adapter Framework for BizTalk Services
• New Workflow designer in BizTalk Services
• New BizTalk Rules Engine in BizTalk Services
• B2B Improvements in BizTalk Services
• Internet of Things (Service Bus)
• Hybrid Connectivity
• Azure API Management
• Customer Success Stories
• Ask the Experts (MVP) interactions

As you can see there is a lot of unique and progressive content on display at this event.  I will be attending the event as will many other familiar faces from the Microsoft Integration community.

Registration is now open and there are some early bird tickets available until November 15th, 2014.

See you there!!!

Book Review - Getting Started with BizTalk Services

 

I recently read the Getting Started with BizTalk Services book and decided to blog about my experience with it.  I have test drove earlier versions of BizTalk Services (blog, blog,  and blog) and decided that I wanted to catch up on some of the more recent developments in this space.  Reading this book was a great way to get this type of information from one source.

Let’s first start off with the authors; Jon Fancey and Karthik Bharathy.  Both Jon and Karthik are BizTalk veterans and are both very well respected in the community.  I knew picking up the book that the quality would not be a concern.

The book does not require a reader to possess extensive BizTalk Server experience.  It does help when drawing comparisons between features in Server vs Services.  Even without a lot of Microsoft Integration experience, a reader can be very productive working through the examples in this book.

Within the book, you will discover 8 chapters covering 156 pages.  Each chapter contains some contextual background information followed by easy to follow examples that include: Introduction to BizTalk Services Messages and Transforms Bridges Enterprise Application Integration Business to business Integration Management APIs Tracking and Troubleshooting Moving to BizTalk Services

Even though I have some experience with the BizTalk Services beta and its predecessors I did learn some things from this book.  Probably most valuable chapter for me was Chapter 2 – Messages and Transforms.  While I have used the new “mapper” in BizTalk Services, there were certainly some operations that I haven’t used before including:

• List Operations
• Get Context Properties inside a map
• If then else operation
• Transform Exception Settings.

Another useful chapter for me was Chapter 5 – Business to business Integration.  Even though the BizTalk Services platform is rather young, the BizTalk Services’ EDI capabilities are known to be one of the strengths of the platform.  Since I have not done much in the EDI space, this chapter acted as an EDI Primer and then was able to relate these EDI concepts to the BizTalk Services solution.

Lastly, the Management API chapter was interesting as well.  I have seen Steef-Jan present on the topic, but it was nice to be able to read through some examples on how you can manage your BizTalk Services application.

Conclusion

In the final chapter; Chapter 8 – Moving BizTalk Services discusses some of the current gaps between BizTalk Server and BizTalk Services. The authors drop some subtle hints around what features are coming that will close the feature parity gap that currently exists.  Based upon the agenda for the upcoming Integrate 2014 event, I suspect this gap will be closed rather quickly.  Which means, the timing to pick up this book, to ensure you understand the fundamentals of the BizTalk Services, before some of these other features are announced provides a great opportunity to ensure you can hit the ground running.

The book can be sourced from both Amazon and PacktPub in both e-book and traditional paperback format.   The Kindle version of the book is a mere $8.96 USD which is a incredible bargain.