Azure Thoughts, EAI Challenges

I am home after a good week of conference in Redmond and some sightseeing. This year’s Microsoft and BP Conference was a good one with a focus on BizTalk, but more on SOA itself like Governance, Business & IT agility, Anti-Patterns and business cases. Conference kicked off with keynote session, where OSLO was announced. Since it was announced a lot of attention in blogosphere was noticeable. I attended a lot of session during the conference and here is an overview of them: * Increasing Business & IT agility with SOA & Microsoft – Kris Horrocks (Microsoft) * Flexible Governance Infrastructure – Frank Martinez ( SOA Software ) * BizTalk Adapters for WCF: Deep Dive – Aaron Skonnard (Pluralsight) * Best Practices for Creating Composite Activities – Matt Milner (Pluralsight) * Service Virtualization with .NET & BizTalk Server – William Oellerman, Raul Camacho (Microsoft) * How everyone should test their BizTalk based solutions – Darren Jefford (Microsoft) * Connections...

Last day here at the Microsoft SOA and BP Conference in Redmond I attended Modeling & Composition of Applications by Steve Swartz & Clemens Vasters. It was a cool session and there demo was great. It will be available later this year on their blogs (probably Clemens ). They will also release a white paper about this topic. Next session BizTalk Advanced Orchestration Concepts and best practices Stephen W. Thomas. This session was almost the same as done on Tech-Ed 2007 and can be downloaded . Last session I attended was building solutions with the Microsoft ESB guidance by Marty Wasznicky. Objectives and takeaways were like why and what of an ESB, guidance capabilities, scatter-gather, exception management framework and custom handlers and policy driven invocation. A couple things were the same as session yesterday. It was a fun last day which I spend mostly with a Dutch partner in crime Wouter Crooy from Macaw. Technorati: Microsoft SOA and BPM Conference 2007 SOA Microsoft ...

Final session of today is about identifying and avoiding common anti-patterns in your service oriented architecture solution. It is presented by John Callaway (Quicklearn). Agenda Anti-patterns defined Common anti-patterns and solutions Patterns A pattern is something which is documented to a common problem that produces beneficial results, there everywhere and SO ones adhere to tenets of Service Orientation. The tenets are all to known by now everybody in world who knows Service Orientation (explicit, autonomous, policy, share schema and contract). Core SO Patterns Share reuse assets Share representations of core entities and types Consolidate function and data Conform to standards Separation of concerns between system aspects Anti-Pattern A pattern design that may appear to be beneficial, but ultimately is detrimental Identify SO can be best de done by defining what are not best practices..and avoid them Quote Michelangelo : When I look at a slab of marble I see the statue that was t...

This afternoon today at Microsoft SOA and Business Process Conference I went to a session about service virtualization with .NET and BizTalk Server done by William Oellermann and Raul Camacho. Both work for SOA Solutions Team at Microsoft Corporation. Their objective was to establish significance service virtualization in SOA implementation and demonstrate roles of .NET 3.0, SQL Server and BizTalk R2 in service virtualization. Takeaway eventually is to let the audience understand how. Speakers did a quick intro into the subject going through SOA versus service establishment, WSDL boundaries, and service virtualization and implementing it. Then they did a demonstration of the managed service engine that can be found on codeplex site . Sam Gentile already did a post about this among other things that happen here at the conference. This is pretty interesting stuff so check it out. Technorati: Managed Services Engine Microsoft SOA and BPM Conference 2007 WCF

Last session for me today at Microsoft SOA and BP Conference was on flexible SOA Governance. Frank Martinez from SOA Software was presenting this topic with his software portfolio. So this was a kind of product session. His company is a Microsoft Partner and has products in - SOA Governance - SOA Policy Management - SOA Security - SOA Mediation - SOA Management And has customers like jetBlue, Verizon, Amgen, Thomson, Ford, and Ingram Micro… Ok so here are some blurts from his session. SOA Goals - Reduce cost - Increase agility to better align IT and Business - Reduce Risk, fragility and complexity of integration by improving interoperability through standards SOA-Driven Technical Governance Challenges - Lifecycle related concerns - Operations related concerns Top 5 SOA Governance Fallacies #5 We already have good IT and application lifecycle governance #4 We don’t have an SOA program…therefore, we don’t need SOA governance #3 We don’t have any services..therefore we don’t need soa gov...

Increasing Business and IT agility with SOA and Microsoft by Kris Horrocks, who went into offerings by Microsoft on SOA. Here are some blurts from this session. Focus business and technology model and its friction points. These points are: Focus document exchange in the business and inward technology driven view like EAI (contract and messages by different systems) that deliver solutions that impose constraints to the business and business siloed IT. Reducing friction by soften up boundaries. Shared semantics, definitions in technology and business model through service model. Business focus on service and technology focus on contract. Business services compose processes and technology deliver services. Portfolio on Business architecture IT architecture and strategy Solution architecture SOA to succeed: Start with business need ; - Now the it here and now Key benefit is business agility ; - Service reuse is upside Focus on time to value ; - Plan, but don’t boil the ocean Deliver bu...

My fifth day here in Redmond starts with Microsoft SOA and Business Process Conference first day. I arrived a little earlier before conference starts, so I could enjoy scenery in Washington State. I went to Mount Rainer, Mount St. Helens, Seattle Needle, Pike Market, and Snoqualmie Falls and so on. This is definitely the ever green state. Rainer and St. Helens are room name in the Microsoft Conference Center, where event is held. First session of the day is by Robert Wahbe , Donald Ferguson and Steven Martin about Microsoft‘s Vision for the next generation application platform. This is a keynote session, which lasted two hours. First speaker was Donald Ferguson and he went straight into why he started working for Microsoft now instead of IBM and is inspired by Microsoft’s vision. Microsoft is ideal for Model driven development, internet service bus. These two subjects are his passion. Then he went into a scenario about travelling and how his passions fit in. Next person is Robert W...

Anybody saw Rugby final yesterday evening, it was a great outcome. South Africa won and deserved to be world champions, since they won every game. Montgomery did his best with penalty kicks and England was just disappointing. But it’s over now and I will have to wait until RWC 2011 in New Zealand. Well in a few days I am somewhere else in world attending something different: the Microsoft 2007 SOA and Business Process Conference . I have noticed on their site the agenda is ready. It will be hard choice to choose between sessions, because there are a lot of interesting ones. I have to think hard which one to follow, but I have a few days left before I fly to Seattle. Hope to see some of you there. Technorati: Microsoft SOA and BPM Conference SA Rugby

This week I started working again after a nice holiday in Spain and France (see picture, where me and my colleague Joost are behind a laptop, still working!!!). I have begun on a new assignment (project) for a health insurance company. It involves evaluating BizTalk environment they set up together with solutions that were developed. Besides this I will lead a research project to see if the Microsoft ESB can be fitted in their SOA architecture that is evolving. Next to these activities I also will guide/coach information analysts, programmers on BizTalk and its possible role inside SOA. All-in-all a nice job and another opportunity to play an active architect role. During my holiday I have been thinking about how to divide BizTalk in a number of specific areas. I believe that before one will start developing solutions in BizTalk for an organization. The product should be evaluated for its use inside an enterprise and what its business value will be. If that is the case then one should...