service bus – Note to self

Recapping Integrate 2020

Last week I’ve attended the Integrate conference once again. It was my 5th time attending the conference, and the 4th time I’ve participate as a speaker.

But Integrate 2020 was quite a different experience from the last years. Dubbed Integrate 2020 Remote, to reflect the fact that was yet another event that had to adapt to the pandemic reality that assaulted the planet since the end of last year. Kovai, the company formerly know as BizTalk 360, and the event organizer since its inception in 2012, took some time to decide that the event would go ahead, but when decided that it would be in a new format, didn’t pull any stops to get it running. With almost 1000 online attendees – which is impressive for a paid event, Integrate 2020 had 28 speakers, between Microsoft Program Managers and Microsoft MVPs and as many technical sessions distributed across three days.

MS Build Recap – The AIS Edition

This year’s MS Build was very different – we all know that. But for most of us, me included, was the first opportunity to join the event officially. And what event it was.

Ran across three time zone, with a mix of live sessions, Teams Live events and smaller Teams events, like focus groups, which allowed the attendees to really interact with the product groups and advocates from Microsoft.

This year there were some interesting announcements around the Azure Integration Services technologies. I’ve recently shared those announcements on a Auckland Azure User Group meetup, and thought that, since I already had everything collated, it would be a good idea to just share this with you on the blog as well. So, let’s talk about what is now available, or just \around the corner for AIS

Integrate 2019 in Review

I was on my flight back from London, returning from Integrate 2019, when I started this blog post. It was a very long flight, around 24 hours each way, but even if the jetlag hit me really hard this time around, it wsa worth it. Integrate grew from an initiative from a group of BizTalk MVPs, into the premier conference for Microsoft Integration technologies. It was my honour to be a presenter for the third year in a row, presenting alongside a Microsoft team comprised of Product Managers, Architects and Engineers – the people that actually design and implement the technologies I use on a daily basis – and legends from the Microsoft Integration community like Sandro Pereira, Steefan Wiggers, Richard Seroter, Michael Stephenson and Kent Weare, just to name a few.

The conference is run by Kovai Co – the company formerly known as BizTalk 360 – as a very well oiled machine. A large team from Kovai dedicate months ahead preparing the conference. This edition of Integrate was the largest yet, with over 480 participants, with 26 speakers and 28 sessions, across 3 days.

If I had to choose one theme from the conference this year, would be governance. Seems like most of the integration related technologies got to a stage where the core set of features are available and companies are using them actively. All that activity highlighted the requirement for better tooling and guidance around various aspects of the governance of the platform. From DevOps guidance to security and bettern integration between on-premises and the cloud, pretty much every product group had recent or new announcements around that theme.