The Hybrid Organisation – The story of the day

Published on : Sep 18, 2013

Category : Events

Ricardo

Author

When I joined BizTalk360 a few weeks ago I was given the chance to participate in the UK Connected Systems User Group The Hybrid Event. Of course I enthusiastically accepted, what a humbling experience to present to such great audience and alongside such strong speakers. As part of the Microsoft Cloud O/S initiative this event is included in a week of community driven events focusing on different aspects of Windows Azure. The event action started in the day before, almost all the presenters met for drinks, diner and networking at the Browns Victoria near the event venue. Everyone gladly talked about the integration world, it was a very interesting to be among all of these integration giants. The event started early at the London Microsoft office in Victoria with room setup and speakers preparation, in these days of connectedness it is required that speakers check the projectors, microphone and internet connection before a presentation to guarantee success. Soon the attendees started to arrive to collect their event badge and event giveaways (look at those nice bags). Because we have many international speakers once again the pain of travelling caused a schedule readjustment. As Clemens described it, he got delay at every possible point in the way. The delay affected the departure time, the landing and taxi times. Luckily that was not a significant delay and all sessions were delivered. The Hybrid Organization - Engaged Audience Presentations Mike Stephenson kick started the day by giving the overview of the event, introduced us to the schedule readjustments and practical details.
The Hybrid Organization - Mike Stephenson and Steve Andrews Mike Stephenson and Steve Andrews took the first session slot to talk about the experiences at Buba and how they approached the various integration challenges with the available software integration landscape, leveraging the best of on premise and cloud software and services.
The Hybrid Organization - Richard Seroter Richard Seroter followed with a very engaging presentation where he presented the challenges and opportunities when integrating software as a service applications such as Salesforce or Microsoft CRM Online with the remaining of you datacentre such as SAP or some custom application. In his demos he used a variety of solutions for these problems, leveraging on premise integration software such as BizTalk Server or a cloud based solution such as Informatica.
The Hybrid Organization - Saravana Kumar and Ricardo Torre Saravana Kumar and Ricardo Torre presented a session about the Windows Azure Notification Hubs by first introducing how disruptive and important mobile applications are in this modern world and how this very reason creates the necessity to handle notifications which will have to target millions of very diverse devices. Notification Hubs are a simple way to remove this complexity from the mobile applications.
The Hybrid Organization - Clemens Vasters Clemens Vasters was late due to multiple flight delays and because of some constrains on lunch time he had to end up doing both of his sessions together for a total of 120 minutes. He engaged the audience for this long period with no one giving up while talking about the next wave of integration problems by introducing us the concept of smart products, machine to machine communications (M2M) and the internet of things (IoT). He followed with a architecture deep dive on which is the current challenge on the devices front and on how to handle the problem of having to connect to a million devices.
The Hybrid Organization - Richard Seroter Richard Seroter returned for his second session where he discussed about integration in the cloud by going thru the patterns, technologies and trends of today’s integration world. He presented a series of engaging demos with using the Windows Azure Service Bus and BizTalk Services among others.
The Hybrid Organization - Sam Vanhoutte Sam Vanhoutte finished this series of sessions with a very practical take on the capabilities and limitations of the Windows Azure BizTalk Services. He demonstrated the currently available capabilities in this preview service such as X12 EDI, schemas, mapping and bridges. Sam’s involvement with the product team at Microsoft made us aware of capabilities being added such as Edifact EDI.
Q & A Panel After all the sessions there was a Q&A session with Mike Stephenson, Richard Seroter, Sam Vanhoutte, Yossi Dahan and Ricardo Torre. A lot of the questions were around the subject of which cloud capability to use in particular use cases. Some interesting discussions also happened around a comparison between BizTalk Services and BizTalk Server allowing us to identify which strengths and limitations affect the products and also how to make them work together. Some prize giveaways where given to the most interesting questions, including the just released Microsoft BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.1 book and two Pluralsight one month free cards. The Hybrid Organization - Q&A Panel At the end of the day people wanted to relax from all of this information intake and went to Browns Victoria where there was a table booked for some drinks and networking.
The Hybrid Organization - Coffee Break The Hybrid Organization - Coffee Break
The Hybrid Organization - Engaged Audience The Hybrid Organization - BizTalk360 Bag