INTEGRATION DAY Bangalore – Event Recap…

Published on : Sep 19, 2016

Category : Events

Sriram Hariharan

Author

This blog is the second part of our experience organizing and executing the Integration Day Bangalore event. Read the first part of our roller coaster experience during the pre-event preparations here.

Integration Day Bangalore event – September 10th

After a good night’s rest and the previous day drama, it was time for the BizTalk360 team to head to Microsoft GTSC. It was a beautiful morning at Bengaluru and all the drama that happened the previous day were put at the back of our mind so that we could make the event a successful one. We reached the event venue at 8 AM and started the preparations for the event – setting up the registration desk, discussions with the Microsoft Security team, and so on. By the time we could get a breather, attendees started to come in for the event. By 09:15 AM, we had close to 75% of the attendance at the event venue. Subbu – Head of Operations & Delivery, BizTalk360 welcomed the gathering and handed over the stage to Saravana Kumar for the Welcome speech. Saravana welcomed the gathering and gave a brief introduction to the TechMeet360 initiative of BizTalk360.

Integration Day Bangalore – Attendee Statistics

The below picture shows the attendee statistics for Integration Day Bangalore event. We were extremely pleased to see a 90% attendance for the event despite the state wide strike and tension that prevailed in Bangalore the previous day. Hat’s off to all the attendees who made it for the event. Integration Day Bangalore Attendee Statistics Integration Day Bangalore Panorama

Session 1 – Workflow Automation with Logic Apps

After the welcome speech, Tulika Chaudharie and Harikharan Krishnaraju took the stage for their first session of the day. The session started off with the slide showing Microsoft’s Enterprise Integration vision (Azure Logic Apps and BizTalk Server). Integration Day Bangalore - Microsoft Enterprise Integration Vision Then the session took course towards the basics of Azure Logic apps, the managed connectors that are available within Logic Apps and the designer experience, and the list of out-of-the-box connectors that are available (and the upcoming ones) with Logic Apps. Harikharan then demonstrated a sample Logic app and the demo attracted a lot of interaction from the attendee crowd. The session continued towards API apps, Azure functions, Nested workflows, the steps behind triggering a Logic app instance, and some interesting demos on using Swagger and WebHooks and the Logic Apps designer in Visual studio. You can download the presentation from here.

Session 2 – Evolution of Integration Space

Saravana Kumar started off his session by mentioning the quote “Role of Integration is changing every day”. Saravana then categorized the evolution of integration space into three different areas — Business changes, Role changes, and Technology changes. He showed how integration solutions have evolved over the years – from a point-to-point style to having a integration solution that brings the components together in the architecture. He also touched on the point of how the role of integration consultants is changing and evolving day-by-day. Integration Day Bangalore - Microsoft Integration Suite This session was well received by the attendees and given a positive mention in the feedback form. You can download the presentation from here.

Session 3 – BizTalk and Hybrid Integration

After the morning tea break, it was time for Shailesh Agre to take the stage and talk on BizTalk and how it is used for hybrid integration. Shailesh gave a detailed comparison of the different plans that are available for Microsoft Azure BizTalk Services : PaaS. The session then dived technically deeper into how you can create a BizTalk service from the Azure portal, creating partners and profiles, creating the agreements, setting the throttling conditions, BizTalk administration using the tracking portal (and the Azure portal as well). Towards the end of the session, Shailesh discussed about the Enterprise Integration Pack, Azure Logic Apps Templates (sample templates available here) and Microsoft SQL connector. You can download the presentation from here. Integration Day Bangalore - Enterprise Integration Architecture Give your eyes a break with these pictures from the morning sessions at Integration Day Bangalore event.

Lunch time … Slurp!!

After the morning sessions, it was time for the attendees to enjoy the sumptuous lunch on offer. Full credits to the Microsoft Catering team for giving the perfect mix of delicious food and desserts. Many attendees personally reached out to the BizTalk360 event management team and made a mention about the catering service. Enjoy some pictures of the mouthwatering menu.

Post Lunch session – Integration made easy with Azure Service Bus/APIM

After the yummy lunch, Amit R Bhatia and Puneeth Nayak took the stage to commence their talk on Azure Service Bus and API Management. The duo started their session explaining on what is Azure Service Bus and a detailed explanation of the Service Bus communication mechanisms – Relays, Queues, Topics, Event Hubs with interesting PowerPoint animations showing the different communication mechanisms. We recommend you to download the presentation from here. Integration Day Bangalore - Service Bus Architecture After Azure Service Bus, the duo moved to the next concept – API Management. They started off explaining the concept of API Management, the architecture, and a very interesting demo. Check out this GIF to easily understand why you need API Management. Integration Day Bangalore - API Managment

Session 5 – Using Azure Functions for Integration

It was again time for Tulika and Hari to take stage and talk on their topic – Using Azure Functions for Integration. They started off explaining what is Azure App Service and the architecture. This session had more demos on Azure WebJobs, getting started with Azure Functions, store queue trigger, integration with logic apps. They also explained the best practices for using the “Azure Functions” model. You can download the presentation from here.

(Final) Session 6 – EventHubs & Stream Analytics

It was time for the last session of the day by Arunkumar Kumaresan from BizTalk360 on EventHubs and Stream Analytics. In the blink of an eye, we had reached towards the end of the Integration Day Bangalore event. Arun started off the session with some humor by asking the attendees “How many of you are Data Scientists“? He justified this question by giving an example of how his connections on LinkedIn changed from Software Engineers to Data Scientists (and made a mention that he is called “Big” Data Scientist given his physique). The crowd became lively and enjoyed the humor. The reason to give this example was to make the audience understand that Microsoft has got the technology platform and tools for rapid development on Data Analysis in real time. With the ice breaker done, Arun deep dived into his presentation explaining “what is data?” and “why data is important?”. He then explained the Real time architecture of data flow with the flow diagram. Integration Day Bangalore - Real time architecture of data flow In the Data flow architecture, Arun stressed on the Ingestor (broker) and Transformation sections (Event Hubs and Stream Analytics) and explained the concepts with an interesting demo of the toll booth scenario. You can download the presentation from here. Integration Day Bangalore - Toll booth scenario demo

Surprise session from Saravana Kumar on BizTalk360 version 8.1

It was not done yet! Saravana Kumar stepped on to the stage to demonstrate the latest version of BizTalk360 version 8.1. He started off asking the question – “How many of you know about BizTalk360?“. To everyone’s surprise, about 90% of the attendance showed up their hands. Then Saravana quickly showed the new features that are coming up in the BizTalk360 version 8.1 release (which includes Azure Logic Apps, API Apps, Service Bus monitoring and lot more). You can try BizTalk360 version 8.1 free for 14 days. Here’s few pictures of the post lunch sessions at Integration Day Bangalore event.

Spot Awards and Vote of Thanks

It was time to wrap up the Integration Day Bangalore event. Subramanian Pillai (Subbu) delivered the vote of thanks and thanked everyone involved to make the event a successful one. Subbu also gave out mementos to the speakers for their active participation in the event. He also gave out spot awards to two attendees for the maximum number of Tweets and Re-tweets. We then picked out three lucky attendees (from the feedback forms) and gave them spot awards. We’ll let you enjoy the pictures. It was almost time to say goodbye to all the attendees and with this the Integration Day Bangalore event came to a close. We had a feeling of satisfaction after being able to successfully execute the event after crossing a lot of hurdles. Our thanks go out to all the speakers, Microsoft Evangelism team, Microsoft security staff, Catering team, Reception desk team, and specially to the attendees for making this event a grand success.

Post event dinner

With the satisfaction of organizing the first ever Integration focused event in India, the event management team decided to celebrate the success by heading out for a dinner party with BizTalk360 CTO/Founder, Saravana Kumar. After a yummy dinner at Barleyz, it was time for few of the event team members to head back to Coimbatore. Integration Day Bangalore - Event Dinner

India team get together

We did not stop there! Our initial plans was to take the entire India office team to Bangalore for the event. However, we could only accommodate about 120 attendees in the event hall, which meant that we had to restrict the number of people from India team for the event. To keep the spirits high in the team, the management decided to take the entire India team for a get together cum dinner party at Le Meridian, Coimbatore. The team enjoyed the ambiance, the delicious food on store, and posed for some photographs from our cameramen – Velkumar Gangadharan and Sriram Hariharan. Again, we’ll let you soak in to the pictures to get a feel of the enjoyment.

Conclusion

The first integration day event in India had a tremendous response and we already received questions regarding the next event. We even got suggestions from few attendees to conduct these events in Hyderabad as well. We are definitely looking forward to conducting these kind of events once in 4 — 6 months. If you are interested to attend these events, please fill up the form here. You will definitely hear from us first when we plan for the next event. The presentations from the Integration Day Bangalore event can be downloaded from here.