We just returned from Redmond, and the INTEGRATE 2014 summit, and there are several important alterations to the overall direction of BizTalk and Integration in general in the Microsoft ecosystem. We will take several blog and whitepaper posts over the next weeks and months to discuss various issues in detail, but we wanted to give everyone a preview of the general topics: (as everyone knows, I’m not speaking for Microsoft in any of this, only trying to summarize the discussion topics from the conference.)
- First and foremost, Microsoft is still committed to the 10 year support window from release of all integration products that are currently on the market, both on premises and cloud based.
- More focus will be given to the cloud based integration offerings (Azure) in the immediate future, than will be given to BizTalk.
- Newly released functionality for Azure is expected in Q1 of 2015, to include:
- A revolutionary approach to security for cloud applications.
- Availability of all Azure functionality in both public cloud and private cloud configurations
- Many pre-built adapters for lightweight integration functionality into the Azure cloud
- Opening of an Azure marketplace, where additional pre-built “microapplication” functionality can be purchased from individual Microsoft Partner organizations
- Availability of all Azure services through Azure Pack, allowing these services to be run in the cloud location of the customer’s choice
- Support to enable the migration of previously built BizTalk functionality into the Azure cloud, either public or private.
- New Identity Management solution available in Azure that can help Healthcare facilities to meet HIPAA regulations in bring your own device (BYOD) scnearios.
- New Release of Microsoft Power BI, a tool that can rapidly provide ad-hoc dashboard capabilities for nearly any application or data set.
- Much more!
All in all, it was a very worthwhile conference that provided significant insight into the direction the Microsoft is intending to take its integration products in the future.
Look for more blog articles in the near future covering a number of these topics in more depth.