Wow……I can’t even remember the last time I blogged. I’ve been living on an airplane; it seems like for years now. I guess an update is in order. I’m still working for Microsoft….in the Connected Systems Division. That’s the place in Redmond where we build things like BizTalk, Host Integration Server and WCF. I still cover the West Region for Microsoft in Regards to BizTalk….as well as a bit of the Northeast Region. I still run the BizTalk Virtual TS program….a program I designed in SoCal back in 2004….but I’ve been able grow it across the nation where it now contributes to almost a third of the US BizTalk business. We’ve even got seeds of it growing in Canada and EMEA…pretty cool.
Most recently though I’ve been heads down on building the Microsoft ESB Guidance for BizTalk….a project I started about a year ago from the work that Lukas Cudrigh (Microsoft NorCal), Brian Loesgen (Neudesic) and I started at a major healthcare company (Kaiser). You can read all about it on Brian’s blog (http://geekswithblogs.net/bloesgen/archive/2006/11/03/96062.aspx).
We released the first build of this last October at our Microsoft Redmond SOA event. As you can imagine….it took off like wild fire! We set up a Microsoft email alias for those interested in it. I got inundated with several hundred requests for it in a matter of months!
Short story, we were able to convince the powers that be that this was the way to go. I got the green light to move forward and we are now partnering with the Patterns and Practices team to revise and complete the Guidance to work BizTalk Server 2006 R2 (which we expect to release in September). The Guidance itself, we expect to ship shortly after R2, probably at the beginning of October this year. The ESB Guidance will be an official branded release by the Patterns and Practices team.
On the Patterns and Practices side, Don, Dmitri, Rajat, Alex and the team are keeping us honest and the quality bar high (I think Rajat spent his entire weekend just testing our latest drop). On the development side, I’m the architect and development lead for a small pack of Partner based resources (Sogeti, Magenic, CTS and Neudesic). We’re a small but passionate group and, together, I think we’re going to deliver one of heck of a package to the community.
As we continue to develop the features and dream of new things on the horizon, I’ll try to keep my ideas posted here. In the meanwhile, I’ve posted below the latest email I sent to the community at large regarding our latest CTP release of the ESB Guidance on codeplex (www.codeplex.com/esb ). If you’re interested, you can also peruse through the current documentation on Alex’s site, http://www.daveandal.net/articles/esbdocs/
Cheers!