2013 was a big year for us in terms of events: BizTalk Summit 2013 London, Oporto BizTalk Innovation Day, Bouvet Innovation Day, and finally BizTalk Innovation Day Italy… but we promise that 2014 will start even bigger and better!
Nearly 200 attendees (an increase of 56% compared with the previous year) and more than 100 different companies from 20 countries were present at this event. 12 Microsoft Integration MVPs from across the world (USA, Canada, India, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Italy, Belgium, and, of course, the UK) and 2 members of the Microsoft Product group were present as speakers! These are some of the numbers that reflect the huge success of this event!
And viewing all the comments (Day 1 and Day 2 summary from tweets, what did the attendees say)… we did it! Of course, this was not possible without all the effort and commitment of Saravana Kumar and all his BizTalk360 team (~6 months on this project), which made this a remarkable event!
📝 One-Minute Brief
Sandro Pereira recaps the massive success of BizTalk Summit 2014 in London, an event that drew nearly 200 attendees from 20 countries. Featuring 12 Microsoft MVPs and key members of the Microsoft Product Group, the summit covered the future of BizTalk Server 2013 R2, Azure BizTalk Services (WABS), mapping patterns, and administration best practices. The post highlights key sessions, free community resources, and the vibrant spirit of the global integration community.
The journey
Like almost all the speakers and many attendees, I arrived on Saturday, March 1, thereby enjoying the weekend to get to know London city a little more and chat with my fellow MVPs and members of the BizTalk Community.
The event
My session was on the second day of the event in the afternoon. And was all about BizTalk Mapping Patterns where I tried to address and explain some common mapper problems, specifying best practices and some of the best ways to address common problems by choosing the right approach and a small introduction to WABS maps where I address the key differences between BizTalk Server and BizTalk Services maps, key problems in migrating BizTalk Server to BizTalk Services maps and some WABS maps samples.
Unfortunately, due to time constraints, I had to be very brief, showing only key concepts and not going deep into many topics. But overall, I was pleased with the end result and all the people, and people can find out more details on these topics when my eBook becomes available.
But let’s go back to the beginning…
Day 1
The first day started at 7 am, with registration progressing smoothly. And after a quick kick-off at 8:45 by the hand of Saravana Kumar, the Microsoft Product Group took the stage, first by Guru Venkataraman that start his presentation by saying “On-prem is real and here to stay!” and also explaining the BizTalk Server roadmap and the new version: BizTalk Server 2013 R2 that they are preparing and the Windows Azure BizTalk Services roadmap.
Being succeeded by Harish Kumar Agarwal, who explains in detail all the Windows Azure BizTalk Services features updates that went into the February release.
After the Microsoft Product Group was time for the Microsoft integration MVPs to take the stage, and two more sessions were carried out in the morning:
- Jon Fancey presented a session about how you can move to BizTalk Services, explaining the advantages and challenges you can expect in moving to the cloud
- And Saravana Kumar covered some key capabilities of BizTalk360 in his session and demonstrated how to improve your operations (monitoring and management) in your BizTalk environment using BizTalk360.
The afternoon started with a monster on the stage who doesn’t need any introduction: Richard Seroter, who gave us an overview of existing integration tools and how to choose the right one for the right scenario. However, Richard was not alone and was followed by two great sessions:
- Tord Glad Nordahl with an excellent, kind of provocative (in a good sense and intentional) session on how we/you can mess up the BizTalk environments! Providing excellent tips and tricks not only for admins but also to developers on what you can do and should avoid doing.
- And Stephen W. Thomas, who gave us a look at Windows Azure IaaS and how best to leverage it with BizTalk Server 2013. Providing also awesome PowerShell scripts for configuring and managing your VM in the cloud.
And finally the day 1 finishes with a Q&A session with Microsoft Product Group and a couple of MVP’s, special reference to the presence of Michael Stephenson on this session:
After that, it was time to talk with the attendees, have some social networking with some beers, and have speaker dinners at Browns.
Day 2
The second day started at 9 am with four amazing sessions carried out in the morning:
- The first one that took the stage was Kent Weare, that give us a look into mobile services, presenting a real-world business scenario using many of Windows Azure building blocks like Azure Service Bus and Azure Mobile Services; and BizTalk Server 2013
- Steef-Jan Wiggers was the second, and, as always, he delivered a great session on the Manageability of Windows Azure BizTalk Services, focusing on the tools available for managing WABS solutions.
- Isn’t there a session about BAM every day? I personally like this topic, and Dan Rosanova was the person responsible for it! And what a great job. It was one of my favorite talks/topics! He walked to through real-world BAM implementations that covered all the key concepts of BAM.
- The last in the morning was Johan Hedberg, who lost a bet and had to wear a Canada shirt during his presentation, but he was not intimidated and gave a good session on how to use BizTalk Server together with SQL Server Master Data Services.
The afternoon started, in my personal opinion, with the best session of the event and with an “animal” on the stage: Nino Crudele, in addition to captivate and put the whole audience laughing, Nino was able to present an awesome add-in to Visual Studio “btsgnosaddin” that will make the lives of all BizTalk developers much better and easier! This will be a tool that all BizTalk developers must have!
This session was followed by two more sessions:
- Sandro Pereira (me), who better than me to succeed my good friend Nino?
- And the last one to take the stage was Sam Vanhoutte, who gave us a session about running durable workflows in the cloud and on-prem. Providing an overview of the Workflow Manager and showing awesome hybrid demo applications using Twilio.
Once again, for me it was excellent and an honor to participate in this event alongside all these amazing people responsible for making it happen: the speakers and the BizTalk Crew, Microsoft, the BizTalk360 crew members, and especially all the attendees!
After the event
After the event, it was time to relax and enjoy the last night in London with friends and fellow BizTalk Community members.
Stay tuned on the BizTalk Innovation Day Facebook page to learn more about our upcoming events!
Key point/resources to take into considerations
- “btsgnosaddin” addin to Visual Studio that will be provided by Microsoft Integration MVP Nino Crudele for free!
- PowerShell scripts to configure and manage your VM in the cloud that will be provided by Microsoft Integration MVP Stephen W. Thomas for free!
- BizTalk Mapping Patterns and Best Practices eBook that will be provided by Microsoft Integration MVP Sandro Pereira (me) for free!
- All the sessions will be available online soon on the BizTalk360 webpage
Hope you find this helpful! If you liked the content or found it useful and would like to support me in writing more, consider buying (or helping to buy) a Star Wars Lego set for my son.
Sandro, it was a pleasure attending and the hopes for many more in the years to come.
I attended this event first time and found it really helpful and entertaining. Nice summary of the event. Sandro your session was great. Looking forward to get your ebook.
Thanks Sajid.