Astute browsers of the blog have noticed that we’ve changed the name of the October conference. It is now known as the Microsoft SOA and Business Process Conference. Why’d we do that? Well that’s an interesting story. It seems some people think that Microsoft doesn’t do SOA. Well not people per se; some press, analysts and BDM’s (marketing speak for business decision maker, or your bosses, bosses, boss) only believe in talk. Walking the walk isn’t true until you yell your message at the top of your voice.
As the loyal BizTalker’s reading the blog know the Microsoft technology stack is service oriented from top to bottom. From Windows Vista (.NET Fx 3.0) through 2007 Office System (XML file formats) to SharePoint (Web Service enabled) down to BizTalk, SQL Server and Windows Server itself, Service Orientation is baked in. It’s in the platform, silly.
Microsoft’s SOA story isn’t secret sauce locked up in the heads of suited consultants or hiding inside the box of ’out of this world’ costly software packages. It’s out in the open. It’s there in Visual Studio for developers to unleash. It’s in Operations Manager for IT to harness and it’s in Internet Explorer and ASP .NET/Atlas for the world to mash up. Architectural guidance is plainly in view on MSDN (well if you can get the query right in the search engine it is :^). Microsoft partners build SOA solutions every single day.
Yelling “SOA” at the top of our voices seems redundant, so we won’t do that. But if explicitly discussing real capabilities that any of us can use is your idea of ’talking the talk’ then the Microsoft SOA and Business Process Conference is the show for you. We on the BizTalk team will make sure to invite some press and analysts and you can bring your BDM. Let’s nip this nasty FUD in the bud.
The conference track abstracts will go up on the site next week as will a call for sessions to interested presenters. Shortly after that we’ll post the session abstracts themselves.
Remember the early bird registration discount is available through July 21st. You can register for the show at http://impactevents.com/biztalkconference/
Regards,
mike