Microsoft TechEd North America 2012–Day 1

Keynote

The Keynote started off like a Keynote from another technology company.  A DJ was spinning tunes and also showed off his new ‘turntable’ that runs on Windows technology and is all the rage these days (so he says).

 

 

Post DJ dialog, Satya Nadella stepped up to the mic and provided some insight into the state of computing inside and outside of Microsoft.  He provided the following:

• We are at the shift of a new paradigm.  Much like at the dawn of Client-Server, we find ourselves in a position where we need to re-invent ourselves by leveraging new technologies such as the cloud.
• Microsoft is focused on providing Services at internet scale
  • Microsoft currently runs some of the worlds biggest apps (Xbox live, Bing, Exchange, CRM)
  • feedback loop
  • global scale, 24 x7
  • ultra-modularity.
  • 16 major Microsoft Data centers around the world
  • Bing 300 petabytes of data
  • Microsoft battle testing each piece of new technology released
  • Bing is running on top of the the Windows Server 2012 RC
    • You can’t “head fake” this type scale

Next up was Jason Zander and he was here to speak about some of the advancements in the Windows Server and System Center product space.  Jason added that datacenters, no matter on-premise or cloud, are required to be more responsive to ever changing business needs.  Much like everything, it seems, these days people want services cheaper, faster and delivered yesterday.  The advancements in Windows Server and System Center have been created to address these needs(well except the yesterday bit).

The Modern Datacenter needs to be:

• Scalable and elastic
• Always up, always on
• Shared Resources
• Automated and self service

Windows Server 2012

• Windows Server 2012 has been designed to handle “workloads that can’t be virtualized”
  • unprecedented hardware configurations
  • 64 node clusters and 4000 VMs in a single cluster
  • If you own a SAN, using Windows Server 2012 is a no brainer
    • 10gb file copied in 10 seconds using ODX
  • 80 000 customers downloaded Windows Server RC in first week
  • ~150 TAP customers

Mark Russinovich was up next.  He wanted to discuss some of the advances that the Azure team has made in the area of supporting durable Virtual Machines in Azure.  One of the more humorous moments was when he referred to a slide that had a Linux logo on it: “no we didn’t get hacked, we do support Linux”.

Provisioning Cloud infrastructure

• New Metro interfaces in portal
• VMs now supported includes
  • OpenLogic
  • SUSE
  • Ubunto
  • Windows Server 2008 R2
  • Windows Server 2012 RC
• We can deploy a new VM into a segregated “corporate network” in Azure (I assume this means what previously was known as Brooklyn")

The CIO from Aflac, an insurance company, who has deployed a SharePoint solution to Azure was brought on stage to share his experiences with Azure.  They have built a solution by provisioning VMs into Azure.  Aflac chose Azure based upon the agility and flexibility that it provides.

Cloud and Aflac (CIO)

Requirements

• Need Agility
• Flexibility
  • Aflac may run promotions or have peak usage periods based upon customer policy expiration dates
• Performance
• They have many different locals and support offices in many different regions.  They need global scale to reduce latency
• Japan is a heavy user of their services

Solution

• SharePoint 2010
• Built on VMs hosted on Azure
• One use case is to schedule customer appointments  with a Customer Service representative
• Capture this information in Azure and then bridge it back to On Premise using VPN (Azure Connect)
• 12 VMs support solution including
  • SharePoint App Servers
  • SharePoint Web front ends
  • SQL Server cluster
  • AD cluster
  • SCOM
• Use availability sets to further mitigate failure points
• Looking to use Azure for extranet and customer scenarios

The Keynote then shifted towards the Developer experience including new Azure and Visual Studio 2012 functionality.

Inside the modern Application

• Personal App experiences are now mandatory
• Social is something that needs to be built into application and can’t be a “bolt” on
• Build, Measure, Learn, Move

New Tools:

• Visual Studio 2012

Frameworks

• .Net 4.5

Comprehensive Runtime

• Windows Server
• Azure

 

ASP.NET MVC4/VS 2012 RC

• Built in support for Mobile and Web Applications
• pluggable emulators

HTML is now supported for LightSwitch

• You can create a Mobile Client using HTML5/Jquery/Javascript/CSS)

Keynote Summary

Having the DJ out there at the beginning was a nice touch.  I am sure they wanted to pump up the crowd and generate some excitement.  I think they hit the mark here but slowly the energy started to drain.  There were several demos that didn’t work or required a second take for them to run.  This is a bit of a let down as an attendee.  Sure “stuff happens” but it seems like there could have been more rehearsing happening before hand.

I also felt Microsoft missed an opportunity to talk about Windows 8 and consumer devices.  Arguably this is not the right time or place to do this but everyone in the building uses a computer on a day to day basis as part of their job.  I would have loved to seen some demos of some slick new tablets or ultra books running the latest offerings.  Ironically I heard more people talking about the newly released MacBook Pro today than Windows 8 devices.  I see this as suitable evidence that they missed the mark considering the “pro” Microsoft audience at this conference.

Windows Azure Today and Tomorrow (Scott Guthrie)

If you have never seen Scott speak…you are missing out.  He has this uncanny ability to take an awkward situation and make people laugh.  He did this at Summit with his “Bob” Azure site and once again today with his “Dude” Azure site.  He is very engaging and enjoys ‘pop-star’ status amongst the Microsoft loyalists.

In his presentation, he elaborated on some of the recent news that he shared at the Meet Azure event.  More specifically he focused on the new durable VM support, Azure Websites and ServiceBus.  Surprisingly he even included “BizTalk” a couple times and  he did not include the words “death, dead, soon to be dead or shot dead” in the same sentence.

General Update

• Azure is flexible, open and solid
• Microsoft has opened their minds to new platforms and open source
  • Linux hosted on Azure
  • SDKs being opened and hosted on GitHub
• 99.95% monthly SLA
• Pay only for what you use
  • Scale your resources as you grow

MSDN

Scott then reminded the attendees with MSDN that it includes Azure benefits

• Benefits are based upon type of MSDN account (Pro/Premium/Ultimate)
• Free trial
  • If you use MSDN your hours will be credited

Durable VMs

• Create a new VM in seconds/minutes
• Users have Full Admin on the provisioned server via RDP
• Can install your own applications on the durable VMs including SQL, SharePoint and BizTalk (check out Steff-Jan’s BizTalk post here)

• Storage is replicated to 3 locations
• Seamless failover
• Async  backup to another datacenter at least 500 miles away
• Don’t have to do this if you don’t want to
• Websites
• Build with ASP.Net,  Node.js or PHP
• Deploy in seconds with FTP, GIT or TFS
• Start for free, scale up as your traffic grows
• Shared Mode (Free)
• 10 websites for free
• other tenants co-hosted
• Reserve Mode (Pay as you go)
• Dedicated VMs
• No other tenants
• Charge for VMs on a per hour basis
• Converting existing applications to cloud is easy
• Right mouse click and select “Add Cloud Services Project”
• Another Azure package will be added to solution
• Create new roles
• backend
• front end
• VMs are always being monitored and if a failure does exist, your application will be migrated to a new VM to ensure of business continuity
• You have the granularity to spin up or down a particular worker role.
• You can RDP into a Role instance as well
• Cloud allows you to focus on apps and not infrastructure
• Azure is great for the following scenarios:
• Burst/bust scenarios
• Seasonal events (tax, Christmas, Thanksgiving)
• Dev/Test
• Sales/Promotions
• Many SDKs are supported
• .net
• java
• python
• php
• node.js
• SQL Database
• Relational SQL Server Engine in the cloud
• Clustered for HA
• Fully managed service
• backups
• SQL Reporting support
• Provisioned in seconds
• Can scale to 150 gb in seconds
• Can be accessed from ADO.Net
• Can be accessed from on-premise/cloud, websites etc.
• BLOB storage
• HA, scalable and secure file system
• Blobs can be exposed publically over http
• Continuous geo-replication
• Distributed Cache
• low latency, in memory distributed cache
• Dynamically grow and shrink cache size
• ha support
• memcached protocol support
• Twitter demo went from 1.6 seconds to retrieve tweets from twitter down to .29 ms
• ServiceBus
• Secure messaging and relay capabilities
• Easily build hybrid apps

Windows Azure Today and Tomorrow Summary

Overall it was a good session.  Like I mentioned before, Scott is a great speaker and I enjoyed listening to him.  Some of the content he provided I have seen at Summit, but I certainly can’t hold that against him.  I think this was a great introduction to Azure for people that have not seen it before or for those who took a look a few years back and are now interested in learning more about it.

BizTalk Book Release: Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010 (70-595) Certification Guide

I received word from Packt Publishing today that our book has officially been published.  This book has been around 10 months in the making so it is very rewarding to see this book released.

The intent of this book is to prepare experienced BizTalk developers and administrators with the tools that they need to write the exam.  It was an interesting project and different from my last book adventure. In the BizTalk LOB book we were really interested in addressing a few core concepts within a particular chapter.  For instance in the SAP chapter, I emphasized on how to send and receive IDOCs.  This time around in the MCTS book we needed to address the requirements of the exam to ensure that we provided proper coverage.  I definitely feel that we did hit the areas that we needed to hit.

Another interesting aspect of the MCTS book was our existing NDA as we all wrote (and passed) the exam before starting out on our journey.  This book is not a  cheat sheet.  You won’t find the exact questions and answers on the exam.  Overall the book is around 467 pages so there is a lot of content to cover.  If you invest the time in reading the book and working through the examples and practice tests, I am confident that you will do well on the exam.

It was a pleasure working with the other authors: Johan Hedberg and Morten la Cour.  Writing books is not always a smooth process and Johan, as the lead author, did a great job keeping the book moving.  I had not worked with Morten before the project and appreciated the professionalism that he brought to the project.

Creating a polished product like this book takes more than just talented authors.  There is a core team that is working behind the scenes that really make these projects successful.  With that said I would like to thank the Packt team for their determination in getting this project to the printers.  I would also like to thank the very talented reviewers who held us in check and increased the quality of the book.  These reviewers include:

• Mikael Hakansson
• Steef-Jan Wiggers
• Jan Eliasen
• Basil Cheng
• Sandeep Kesiraju
• Todd Uhl

The book is available for purchase from both Packt and Amazon websites.

 

 

What’s Next?

I have already been asked by a few people, what’s next?  Do you have another book coming out?  I do not have any immediate plans to write another book.  If a topic did come up that was extremely interesting I would consider it.    Writing is a very large time commitment and has been a very positive experience but I do want to spend some time reading(and learning new things)  instead of writing. 

Book Review: BizTalk Server 2010 Cookbook by Steef-Jan Wiggers

Recently I have found myself with some time to review a book instead of writing one. This time around it was a BizTalk book written by fellow BizTalk MVP Steef-Jan Wiggers.  Steef-Jan is no stranger in the BizTalk community.  He has been very active in the MSDN forums, reviewing and writing books and has been busy on the speaking circuit in the Netherlands, Sweden, Canada and more recently Italy.

Steef-Jan has a lot of BizTalk experience so it should come as no surprise that he has written a very practical book based upon a lot of real-world experience.  This experience is demonstrated constantly through-out the book and was very refreshing.

The book itself focuses on many areas including:

• Setting up BizTalk Environments
• BizTalk Automation Patterns
• Instrumentation, Error Handling and Deployment
• Securing Message Exchange
• WCF Messaging with BizTalk
• BizTalk AppFabric Connect
• Monitoring and Maintenance
• Rules Engine
• Testing BizTalk Artifacts

So based upon these areas of discussion it is impossible to go into a tremendous amount of depth on each topic.  However, Steef-Jan will provide a practical example and then leave the reader with links to valuable resources where you can dive deeper if you wish.

One of my favorite topics in the book included the Instrumentation, Error Handling and Deployment chapter.  I feel that this chapter introduces some of the “tricks of the trade” that can really provide some benefit  to a BizTalk developer.  In this chapter you will discover some tools like the BizTalk Benchmark Wizard and NLog.  These are both valuable tools that we have included in our BizTalk deployment at my organization.

Another area of the book that I enjoyed was the Monitoring and Maintenance chapter.  More and more we are starting to hear about Monitoring and Maintenance.  Steef-Jan discusses tools that can really provide visibility into your BizTalk environment including SCOM, BizTalk 360 and MessageBox Viewer.

All in all the book was excellent.  I can’t say there was a topic that I didn’t feel was appropriate.  I think there are probably some areas that could definitely benefit by having more details included.  But, the book is a Recipe book and I think it delivers on what is promised in the book’s overview.  Congrats Steef-Jan on putting together a great book!

You can find the book on both the Packt and Amazon websites.

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.