2012 Canadian Leadership Summit–Day 2

On day 2, the Summit contained breakout sessions that allowed us to dig into some of the topics that were introduced on the first day.  More specifically we were able to dive into topics such as Windows 8 and the Consumerization of IT, Dynamics AX 2012 and CRM “R8”.

Consumerization of IT

With worker demographics changing, employees are now placing new demands on organizations to use more modern technology or let them use their own.  For many recent College graduates, they don’t remember a time when there wasn’t an internet.  For many employees, they have more computing power and modern equipment at home than they have in the office.  These situations are creating headaches for Infrastructure managers, IT Directors and CIOs.

Windows 8 provides some tools that address some of the needs of this emerging demographic.

Windows 8 for the Enterprise

• No compromise business tablet
• The flexibility of a tablet with the productivity of a desktop
• Picture Password -  No longer are you forced to remember some password with ridiculous password requirements.
• Touch first experience – introducing touch into Microsoft’s latest Operating System is not an afterthought.  This Operating System was built with touch in mind.
• “Always” Connected applications through live tiles.  No longer do end users have to open applications to determine whether they have received a new purchase order or be glued to their inbox for new alerts.  This information can be presented in form of a Live Tile much like you have on your Windows Phone 7.
• When in “Windows 7 mode” applications behave the same way as in Windows 7.  Not all applications will be “Metro” ready at launch or any time soon after that.  If you have an application that will run on Windows 7, it will run on Windows 8.
• You can dock “’Windows 8” applications beside “Windows 7” applications.  You know that feature in Windows 7 that allows you to dock applications side by side?  You can still do this in Windows 8 and can even doc a Windows 7 application with a Windows 8 application.
• Tablets can be managed by existing infrastructure tools like SCCM
• Innovative Devices
• Touch
• Long battery life
• Thinner, lighter, faster footprints
• Convertibles – want the traditional experience of a keyboard and mouse but the ability to detach your screen and use it as a tablet?  If so this functionality will available
• Workers who require more durable footprints will have the ability to use ruggedized laptops.
• Booting from a USB device
• They showed a demonstration where they had a Windows 7 computer and they inserted a USB key that contained a Windows 8 corporate image.  They rebooted the computer and they were able to boot Windows 8 off of the USB drive.  They then showed a demo where they were playing a video from the Windows 8 computer.  They pulled the USB drive out from the physical computer.  The video freezed.  The presenter then plugged the USB drive back in and the video resumed.  If you plug the USB key in within 60 seconds life is good.  If you take longer than 60 seconds then the machine will be shut down.
• This feature provides a lot of potential for people who want to bring their own device to work or where you have contractors who bring their own laptop but you want them to run your corporate Windows 8 image.
• Enhanced Bitlocker support
• Windows 7 introduced the ability to encrypt a USB key.  The problem was that you had to encrypt the entire volume of the drive.  If you had a larger USB key, like 32 GB or 64 GB, this operation took a long time.  New in Windows 8 is the ability to just encrypt the data instead of the entire volume.  This is a great balance between performance and security.
• New Security features
• New boot loader features will detect when OS files have been tampered with upon boot up.  If the boot loader detects malware, it will make a connection to obtain Anti malware drivers, load them and remove the malware.
• Virtualization and management
• VDI is a technology that allows organizations to operate a farm of virtualized windows clients.  Much like organizations can run virtualized server farms, they can also run virtual desktop farms.  Windows 8 offers a superior experience over Windows 7 VDI experience.
• Scrolling over VDI is very fluid even when using Touch.  This is rather remarkable considering that the Server hosting the Windows 8 image has no hardware support for touch.
• End users can pinch , zoom out and zoom in
• Full fidelity – watching video is flawless over LAN and WAN configurations
• USB re-direction allows you to plug in a USB device on local machine.  A signal then gets sent to the Host Server and is then rendered in the VDI session
• Storage Pools allow administrators to manage a pool of disk instead of have hard quota set for each client
• Windows 8 Market
• With 525 million Windows 7 users, Microsoft has high expectations for Windows 8 adoption and plans to offer a Windows Marketplace that supports 200 locales
• Consumerization of IT an Opportunity or Risk?
• It can be both
• Consumerization Device Scenarios
• On your own (low control)
• Bring your own (medium control)
• Choose your own (Enterprise full control)
• Here is your own (Enterprise Full Control
• Microsoft has different policies depending upon the scenario
• Classify devices and then provide the appropriate enforcements
• Access Strategy
• User Based: who are you (e.g.. No Access, read write, full control)
• Device Based: How much to I trust the device (e.g. managed vs. unmanaged)
• Location Based: Where are you? (e.g. intranet vs. Internet)

Dynamics 2012 AX

Prior to this event, I have not had a lot of exposure to Dynamics AX.  What became extremely evident is that Microsoft is very aggressive and committed to the ERP segment.  They are also not only interested in establishing a platform but are also interested in providing industry specific solutions.

 

Proactive Applications

• Knowing where we have been is no longer enough, we now need to know what is going to happen next
• End users need a UI based upon their role (Role Tailoring).  The CFO needs different info than the shipping clerk and the information better be populated on the front screen.
• Workflow Inside
• Can’t be a bolt on. Needs to be inherent in the application
• Visualization
• Use external data and make it apart of how you use internal data for forecasting.  For instance the weather having an impact on inventory positions.  We can use this data to compare patterns.  This will allow for additional insights from both internal and external data that has been collected.
• Out of the Box integration with Dynamics CRM so that you have 1 view of the customer

Microsoft’s Approach

• Simplicity and Agility
• Business Processes are subject to change so quickly that your ERP needs to have more agility than it has had in the past
• Cloud
• CRM online or on-premise
• This time next year you will be able to run AX in Microsoft’s cloud
• Microsoft Technology
• Dynamics is leveraging existing investments in other Microsoft technologies like:
• Kinect
• Office 365
• Bing
• Windows
• SQL Azure
• SharePoint
• Windows Phone
• Microsoft Lync

What is Dynamics 2012?

• Core ERP
• BI
• Industry solutions

Cloud on your terms

• Embrace Hybrid
• Pay as you go and Grow
• deliver choice

Other

• Microsoft is working on a Metro screens of Dynamics 2012
• Lines between AX and CRM are starting to blur
• Around 2000 people actively work in the AX organization

CRM – What’s coming down the pipeline?

Big trends in CRM

• Big Data
• Social
• Cloud
• Mobile
• Core CRM

CRM “R8”

• More Mobility options
• CRM on an IPAD will be released within the next few days
• IPAD version has synchronization capabilities you can go online-offline.
• Browser flexibility (support for other browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Safari)
• Social
• Partnerships with LinkedIn
• Both at the company level but also at the contact level
• News aggregation about your customers gets sucked in from external sources.
• CRM users also have the ability to share information from CRM to LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Email or the CRM Activity Feed Wall which is a internal “posting board”
• Industry templates
• Repetitive Intellectual Property that has been acquired from ISVs and Partners
• Capital Markets/Wealth Management
• HealthCare/Health Plans
• Processed based Manufacturing
• Certifications
• Microsoft continues to be certify their offerings with industry standards

CRM Growth

• CRM is one of the fastest growing business within Microsoft
• Extensive Customer list across industries:
• Financial Services
• ING
• Barclay
• Professional Services
• Volt
• PointBridge
• Hitachi Consultin
• Manufacturing
• Volvo
• STAT Oil
• Niko
• Public Sector
• City of London
• Kent Fire and Rescu
• Retail
• Cold Stone
• BestBuy
• Health and life sciences
• Pfizer
• Novozyme
• Travel and entertainment
• Phoenix Suns
• Portland Trailblazers
• Toledo Mudhens
• Arizona Diamondbacks

So this concludes the 2012 Canadian Leadership Summit.  Overall, there was some good sessions.  I really enjoyed seeing what is coming down the pipeline in areas of Windows 8, Dynamics AX and CRM.

2012 Canadian Leadership Summit–Day 1

Every year Microsoft invites some key customers down to Redmond to see the latest and greatest technology.  The Summit is geared towards IT Leadership so unfortunately this time around  I will not get to hear Clemens Vasters speak about Service Bus during this trip to Redmond.

In the welcome session, they discussed the following

• This event continues to grow has 50% more attendees than last year
• Themes
• Saving Money and Gaining efficiencies
• Drive innovation
• Grow our Business
• Support changing User expectations
• Samsung has the exclusive rights to Surface
• New President of Microsoft Canada: Max Long

Sessions

 

Business of the Future (Dynamics AX and CRM)

Dynamics AX 2012 - Business Workloads and Suites

In this session we got the “state of the nation” when it comes to Microsoft’s Dynamics unit.  More specifically it related to Microsoft Dynamics 2012 and Dynamics CRM 2011.

A very common theme was around Workloads.  Workloads meaning processes and where those processes take place.  In some cases those Workloads may take place on-premise where as others may take place in the Cloud.  Also some Workloads may be supported natively by Dynamics AX 2012 and some may be supported by an ISV product.

Microsoft has been investing heavily in Workloads.  Below is a list of various Workloads that they support.  Some may be industry specific and others may be common within organizations (Expenses)

• Business Workloads
• Industry Operational Workloads
• Retail
• Manufacturing
• Distribution
• Horizontal Operational Workloads
• HCM
• Project
• Budget Formulation
• Expenses
• SRM
• Sales Force Automation
• Customer Car
• Marketing Automation
• Administrative “System of Record”
• HR
• Finance

Dynamics AX Adoption

• Great momentum in Retail sector for Dynamics
• Microsoft had a clear industry focus for this release
• Manufacturing
• Food and Beverage
• Chemical
• Public Sector capabilities were introduced
• Professional Services capabilities were introduced
• Acquiring or Building Intellectual Property to support more industry specific solutions
• Are now able to bring processes into a unified solution

Eating their own Dog Food

Microsoft runs on Dynamics AX

• Got rid of Seibel
• XBOX manufacturing is using Dynamics AX
• Expenses

Major Customers in Canada

• Royal Canadian Mint
• Pretro Canada
• Teck
• Subaru
• Techo-Bloc
• Wakefield
• Cordy
• Grics
• David’s Tea

Adding more core, industry specific capabilities is a good idea in my opinion.  Having spent a fair amount of time with SAP solutions, it is quite evident that SAP puts an emphasis on industry specific solutions like the Utilities module: ISU.  I always felt that Microsoft relied too much on 3rd party applications to fulfill these verticals.  I am happy to see them put more emphasis on industry.

 

CRM

The next portion of the session focused on CRM 2011.  They showed an amazing demo where they built a Metro user interface on top of CRM 2011.  The idea behind this was that this company (a beer company) has a mobile workforce that includes “Beer Rangers” (how cool of a job title is that).  These Beer Rangers are much like account managers.  They need to access CRM to manage their client engagements.  Previously, this Brewery had issues with CRM adoption.  They found that the Beer Rangers were not using CRM as much as they should have.

The user interface was extremely fluid.  You would not even know that this was a CRM system unless someone told you it was.  Since the target audience was a mobile workforce, this demonstration was done on a Windows 8 tablet. 

I am responsible for managing our CRM implementation at my organization.  My initial thoughts were that “I want that solution”.  It was amazing.

 

Neat Statistics

• In the last 6 months Microsoft has added 250k users
• 2.25 million users total
• 33k customers world wide
• 31 double digit growth quarters
• 60% of new customers use CRM Online

Major Customers in Canada

• Hydro One
• Globe and Mail
• Children’s Wish
• Big Brothers/Big Sisters
• Paladin
• Starshot
• Legal Aid Alberta
• Tourism Whistler

 

A Perspective on Cloud Computing & Adoption – Steve Martin

Steve delivered a very practical presentation on Windows Azure.  I have been to many Azure sessions that talked about how everyone needs to be in the cloud and made it seem like you were on the outside if you weren’t.  From the beginning, Steve mentioned that we would not see one Windows Azure logo in his presentation and he was right.  He gave a very forthcoming, honest talk on when and why you should use cloud.  He also provided a lot of candid information in areas when you should not use the cloud as it just does not make sense.

When should I embrace the cloud?

Economics

In the majority of cases you will not save money by moving a workload to the cloud. (Yes someone from Microsoft actually said this)  From Microsoft’s perspective they have seen customers save money when using Azure for:

• Dev/Test scenarios
• Temporary workloads
• Bursts
• Proof of Concepts – You can perform many tasks over the course of an afternoon for less than a cup of coffee.

He then offered that you will not save money in situations where:

• You have sustained (long term) utilization.  The cost of compute is still too high for financial benefits.

Architecture

People will move to the cloud to take advantage of Architecture building blocks that either do not exist on –premise or is outside that organization’s core competency.  From a personal perspective, this has always resonated with me. The pure elasticity of Azure is just not something that can be easily emulated within your own datacenter.  Also,  when I look at some of the opportunities that technologies like the Service Bus provide, it just makes sense to move some of these workloads into the cloud.

 

Who is adopting?

• Startups
• Are deferring capital expenses until they have reached the scale where spending the capital makes sense
• 32 of Global 100 are using some form of Azure
• Mixture of  DEV/TEST
• Pilots
• Some production

Cloud Adoption Patterns

• Publicly facing applications
• Applications that move between Public and Private
• Unpredictable & Variable Workloads
• Application Development (DEV/TEST)
• Temporary initiatives
• Sizing & Tuning for investment

Neat Statistics

• In the past 5 hours(from the time I arrived at the conference center to the time of writing):
• 6.49 million cloud compute hours were consumed
• 12 158 new virtual machines have been spun up
• Azure has the same amount of compute power as the entire universe had in 1999

 

Cloud is a double edge sword

You know the term “it takes money to make money”?  For many years companies that could afford to spend a lot of money on R&D and infrastructure had more opportunities to create the next big thing.  With Azure, and cloud computing in general, the playing field has now been leveled. Your competitors now have access to the same toolset that you have access to.  These toolsets will now allow businesses to scale at levels that previously just weren’t possible.  In fact, Professor Richard Foster of Yale University is predicting by by 2020 more than 3/4 of the S&P 500 will be companies that we have not heard of yet.  Considering where Facebook came from less than 10 years ago to approaching a 100 Billion dollar IPO, I agree with Professor Foster.

 

So that is some of the highlights from Day 1.  I will also publish my thoughts from Day 2 on Thursday.

Testing your RFC hosted in BizTalk from SAP

In a recent blog post I discussed how you would host an RFC in BizTalk that SAP could call.  I thought it would be helpful if I also included a post that would discuss how you can test your BizTalk Hosted RFC.  Like most BizTalk Developers, I wanted to be able to perform some tests on my own without bothering our SAP team.  So by following these steps I was able to perform some tests on my own.

NOTE: Performing the following steps will require developer permissions in SAP. I suspect that with this kind of access I could get myself in all kinds of trouble.  Luckily for me, our SAP Security team didn’t ask me too many questions when I requested access. 

 

Testing

• Execute the SE37 “ABAB Function Modules” transaction.
• Type in the name of your Function Module.  In my case it is ZISU_RFC_ADD and then click the Test/Execute button highlighted in Red or press F8

• We now have the opportunity to provide our inputs.  If you recall from my previous post, this RFC will accept two integer inputs and then provided the sum in the response message.  Once we have our two inputs populated we can click on the Execute button (highlighted in red) or click the F8 button.

 

• Our result will now be displayed on screen and we will discover how long it took to get the result.

 

Exceptions

So what happens if BizTalk is not available when you perform one of these tests?  I was curious as well so I simply disabled my receive location, executed my test and received the following result.

Its not pretty but it describes that the “program BizTalk_Z_Add” is not registered.  This is saying that our listener that is using this Program ID is not online. This is a similar error message that we receive during a failed Connected Client test from SM59.

Conclusion

SAP can be a very large and daunting system at times but the more and more I get into it the more comfortable  I feel about its ability to integrate with other systems.  Tools like this one (SE37) and the IDOC resubmit transaction(WE19) can be a BizTalk dev’s best friend when integrating with SAP.

SAP calling RFC hosted in BizTalk

If you have been following this blog you have most likely encountered a few blog posts related to SAP integration.  I also wrote two chapters related to SAP integration in a BizTalk book last year.  In all of the journeys that I have taken with SAP, not once have I encountered a situation were I needed to receive a request from SAP that required a synchronous response.  All of my previous experience required asynchronous messaging with SAP when receiving data from SAP.  We now have a scenario that requires SAP to send BizTalk a “fetch” request and BizTalk needs to provide this information in near real-time.  What was very interesting about this scenario many people within our organization didn’t think, or know it was possible.  I guess it was tough for some to wrap their head around the concept of SAP actually needing information from another system since it tends to be a System of Record.

SAPRFC.INI HUH???

A good starting point for this scenario is in the MSDN documentation.  Initially I thought it would be pretty straight forward and would resemble a situation where BizTalk receives an IDOC.  That was until I received an error similar to the one below indicating that an saprfc.ini file could not be found when enabling the SAP Receive Location.

Log Name:      Application
Source:        BizTalk Server
Date:          3/6/2012 7:12:53 PM
Event ID:      5644
Task Category: BizTalk Server
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      SERVER

Description:
The Messaging Engine failed to add a receive location "Receive Location2" with URL "sap://CLIENT=010;LANG=EN;@a/SAPSERVER/00?ListenerDest=ZRFCADD&ListenerGwServ=sapgw00&ListenerGwHost=SAPHOST&ListenerProgramId=Biztalk_Z_Add&RfcSdkTrace=False&AbapDebug=False" to the adapter "WCF-SAP". Reason: "Microsoft.Adapters.SAP.RFCException: Details: ErrorCode=RFC_OK. ErrorGroup=RFC_ERROR_SYSTEM_FAILURE. SapErrorMessage=Open file 'C:\SAPINI\saprfc.ini' failed: 'No such file or directory'.  AdapterErrorMessage=Error accepting incoming connection. RfcAccept returned RFC_HANDLE_NULL..
 

This really confused me since I could successfully connect to SAP and receive IDOCs.  After some digging, I discovered the following webpage that indicated: “The RFC library will read the saprfc.ini file to find out the connection type and all RFC-specific parameters needed to connect to an SAP system, or to register an RFC server program at an SAP gateway and wait for RFC calls from any SAP system.”

So how do we solve this?

• The first thing that we need to do is to create a System Variable called RFC_INI.  We then need to provide a path and a filename.  For the purpose of my example I used C:\SAPINI\saprfc.ini.

• Next we need to add the contents to our saprfc.ini file.  The values that I needed to provide include:

Field name	Value
DEST	ZRFCADD	In this case, this is the name of the RFC Destination that our BASIS team created for us from SM59.  More details here.
TYPE	R	Type R is for RFC server programs or for a client program working with another external program as RFC server program which is already registered at an SAP gateway.
GWHOST	SAP_HOST_NAME	In my case, this is the name of the physical server that his hosting the SAP Gateway.
GWSERVER	SAP_GATEWAY_NAME	The name of the SAP Gateway.  A standard naming convention is: SAPGW## where ## is the system number for the SAP instance that you are working on.
PROGID	Biztalk_Z_Add	This is the name of the Program ID that has also been provided by BASIS.

 

So if we compare the details between our Receive Location and our saprfc.ini we will see symmetry between the two.  However, the values in the ini file take precedence.

• Now that we have have our SAPRFC.ini file and SAP Receive location in order we can run a connected client test using SM59.  To perform this test, launch the SM59 transaction and then expand the TCP/IP Connections node.

• Scroll through the list to find your RFC Destination.  In my case, I am looking for ZRFCADD.  Double click on this value.

• Click on the Connection Test button to execute the test.

• You should see a successful Connection Test.  If not, there is no point trying to call your RFC from SAP until you get this connection issue resolved.  If SAP can’t perform this “ping test” it won’t be able to actually send you data.  To troubleshoot this you will need to ensure that the values that you have in your receive location/ini file match the values that are defined in SM59.  In most cases you will need to rely upon your BASIS Buddy to help you out.  As I mentioned in my book, I do have a good BASIS buddy so this troubleshooting usually goes smoothly.

• With our connectivity issues out of the way, we can browse for our desired schemas using the BizTalk Consume Adapter Service Wizard and then add them to our solution.

• We can now build out the rest of our application.  In my case I have a very simple map that will add two values that occur in the request message and provide the sum in the response message.

• The only special consideration that we need to take care of is to set the WCF.Action in the Response message.  We can do this inside a Message Assignment shape.  If you don’t take care of this, you will receive a run time error.

sapResponse(WCF.Action) = "http://Microsoft.LobServices.Sap/2007/03/Rfc/ZISU_RFC_ADD/response";

We now are in a position to deploy our application and start receiving requests from SAP.

Conclusion

Overall the process was pretty similar to receiving IDOCs with the exception of the INI file and the WCF Action property requiring being populated.  Performance is similar to receiving or sending IDOCs so you won’t take any additional performance hits.

New BizTalk Book Announced - (MCTS): Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010 (70-595) Certification Guide

Today I found out that the latest book that I have been contributing to is now available for pre-order.  I got involved with this project right around the time that my  last book was published.  Our editor on that book offered us the opportunity to work on this book.  Johan Hedberg, the lead author, was also extended this opportunity.  So after a moment of weakness, and perhaps a few beers on a boat ride in Stockholm, I agreed to get involved in this book as well.  Joining us on this adventure is Morten la Cour who lives in Denmark and also has a vast amount of BizTalk experience.

The book is a preparation guide for the latest BizTalk Server 2010 Certification.  In this book you will be provided with practical examples of the skills that will be measured on this exam.  In our book we do cover each of the areas that will be tested including:

• Configuring a Messaging Architecture
• Developing BizTalk Artifacts
• Debugging and Exception Handling
• Integrating Web Services and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Services
• Implementing Extended Capabilities
• Deploying, Tracking, and Supporting a BizTalk Solution

We also include valuable sample questions at the end of each chapter and also include an entire chapter at the end of the book that should provide you with a good gauge as to whether or not you are ready to write the test.  This book is not a brain dump.  If you are looking for any easy way out you won’t find it here.  But if you already have a good base of BizTalk knowledge and are willing to put in the effort to really understand the content in this book, I am confident that you will do well on the exam.

I would also like to extend thanks to the technical reviewers that have spent hours reviewing our content which without a doubt has increased the quality of the book.  Our reviewers include:

• Steef-Jan Wiggers
• Mikael Hakansson
• Jan Eliasen
• Genuine Basil

The anticipated publish date is in May, 2012.  In the mean time, you can read more about our book on the Packt website :  http://www.packtpub.com/mcts-microsoft-biztalk-server-2010-certification-guide/book

 

BizTalk Server 2010 R2 Announced

In a previous post, I discussed Microsoft’s integration road map particularly related to Microsoft BizTalk Server.  The foundation of that post was based upon Tony Meleg’s presentation from the World Partner Conference.  The good news is that today, Microsoft has given us a glimpse into what is to come with respect to BizTalk Server.  Previously, Tony cautioned us that Microsoft will continue to support BizTalk and will introduce incremental changes to the platform.  Where as most of the innovation will occur in the Azure AppFabric space.

The next version of BizTalk Server is currently called BizTalk Server 2010 R2.  I suspect they are calling this an “R2” release since it is an evolutionary release that particularly focuses on platform alignment with Windows Server 8, SQL Server 12 and Visual Studio 11.  For those of you who do follow the BizTalk scene closely you may recall that BizTalk Server 2010 was originally called BizTalk Server 2009 R2 when it was in beta.  It was renamed to BizTalk Server 2010 prior to RTM.  So who knows if the BizTalk 2010 R2 name will stick but for now that is the name we will go with.

In addition to the platform alignment that I have already mentioned, we can look forward to some new features in the areas of:

• Adapter connectivity to new data sources including IBM Informix V11 and IBM IMS/DB V11
• Updates to industry schemas like HIPPA, HL7, SWIFT and SWIFTNet
• Improved Performance and Scalability
• Tighter integration with the Azure Service Bus
• Adjustment to licensing geared towards cloud hosting

Of the features mentioned, I certainly will not complain about improved performance and am happy to see tighter integration with Azure AppFabric.  I really hope that they introduce a smoother way of integrating with Azure AppFabric Queues and Subscriptions.

I am a little disappointed that there was no mention of fully supported REST endpoints, but it is early so I am hoping that Microsoft will surprise us with that feature.

I have only touched on some of the new features that will be available.  You can find the complete post from Microsoft here.

BizTalk: Adding BizTalk 360 to your Environment

For those that are not familiar with BizTalk 360, it is a Rich Internet Application (RIA) that allows you to monitor and maintain your BizTalk environment via a Web browser.  From what I can see, from a high level, there are a few components that you install in your BizTalk environment that make up the solution:

• Silverlight Application which can be accessed via a remote web browser
• WCF Service(s) that expose the operations to the Silverlight application
• A Windows Service that handles some of the monitoring and notification features
• A BizTalk 360 database that will store your configuration and audit/governance

My organization recently purchased a license and support from BizTalk 360.  In this blog post I plan on explaining some of the rational and features that influenced our decision.

Requirements

Over the past 5 years our BizTalk environment continues to grow.  With this growth comes more responsibility maintaining it.  Our current middleware team consists of both developers and administrators and therefore there is an on-call rotation that is used to handle the after hours support.  After hours support requirements are very binary; BizTalk’s infrastructure is either on or off.  This would include the core components like SQL Server, SSO, Host instances and applications being online.  We are not concerned if a single message is suspended.  The reason?  There is no one from the business available to consult with in order to correctly determine a resolution to the problem.

Also, in parts of Canada the IT Market is getting hot.  Let’s face it there is nothing fun, or cool about being on-call. Even though our environment is very stable, people felt that they were still tied down to their cell phone since we have Service Availability metrics to meet and when an issue occurs response time is very important.  As all BizTalk resources know, BizTalk doesn’t have to be down to get roped into “fire fighting” triage sessions.  Sometimes your large ERP or engineering systems go down and since BizTalk connects into them you are impacted as well. 

The company that I work for is very committed to employee retention and reducing the amount of on-call is a step in the right direction for reducing turnover and keeping employee morale high.

Solution

I know Saravana from the MVP program and at the last MVP Summit Saravana was showing MVPs and some of the BizTalk Product Group an early preview of what is now BizTalk 360.  My initial thoughts included what a nice looking application and some of the features fill a void left by the BizTalk Admin Console but I wasn’t convinced that I had an immediate use for it. 

While I was in Sweden in June, with Richard Seroter,  promoting the book I contributed to, I ran into Saravana again and checked out the progress his start-up made on the product.  Once again I was impressed with the tool but wasn’t sure how I would use it.

Come July and some more concerns about the on-call situation arose and this turned on a light bulb in my head about how we could use BizTalk 360 to help support our environment after hours.  We already have contracted resources that focus on after-hours support for our core infrastructure: Servers, SAN, Network etc.  I thought what if I could piggy back on this existing agreement?  Knowing that I didn’t need BizTalk Experts to keep an eye on my servers after hours, remember the type of service I am looking for is binary: on or off.  BizTalk 360 provides this visibility in a couple ways:

• Dashboard – By looking at this type of screen if is very obvious which artifacts are up and which are down.  Enabling these artifacts is a pretty easy action to perform so I don’t need to pay to have BizTalk Experts monitoring after hours.

 

• Notifications – My company also uses SCOM for monitoring BizTalk and we will continue to do so even with BizTalk 360.  But the feature that I like about BizTalk 360 is the Health Summary email notification that you can configure.  I can now subscribe this after hours team to periodic notifications where they can quickly, and easily, determine the health of the environment.  I don’t want these people logged onto my BizTalk servers hitting F5 all night inside of the BizTalk Admin Console.  Using these email notifications frees them up to work on other things but also provides the visibility that we need.

(Sample email notification – note I have added the black marks to retain some privacy)

Another area that is important to me is the Audit and Governance features that exist.  When trusting a 3rd party to provide support it is very nice to have an audit of what actions took place during support periods.  It protects both the client and the service provider and is a win-win all around.  This is a feature that has been missing from the BizTalk Admin Console that could benefit many organizations.

Overall the process of procuring the BizTalk 360 application has been very positive.  When I first tested out the product there were a few features missing that I really wanted.  Saravana took the time to review them over a Live Meeting, took my high priority needs and was able to provide me with a build on a committed timeline.  Some of my feature requests involve clustered host instances so if you use clustered host instances in your environment – you are welcome!

The BizTalk 360 team is very committed to the product and their customers.  It has been refreshing to work with a company that is so motivated.

Conclusion

Something that I have learned through this process is to always keep your eyes open to new trends and tools.  I find Twitter really helps in this regard by following likeminded individuals.  You don’t need to deep dive on every new technology that you see but it is important to know that it exists as you never know when your requirements may change and you can benefit from it.  Case in point my situation that emerged this past summer.