Open your calendar and mark the 16th of September!

I think most people know who Richard Seroter is. Even if you don’t follow blogs on a regular basis, I’m sure you’ve come across his articles from time to time. I know Richard as a very smart guy with a great sense humor, and we’re very happy to finally get him to Stockholm.

Richard is the author of the recently released "SOA Patterns for BizTalk Server 2009" book (Packt Publishing) which takes a look at how to apply good SOA principles to a wide variety of BizTalk scenarios. He is also the technical reviewer of the upcoming “Pro BizTalk Server 2009” book from Apress.

Read Johan Hedberg’s review here.

BTW, before the event I plan to post a “Four Questions WithRichard Seroter”!

Topic: BizTalk Server, SOA and the Shift to the Cloud

Session 1: In this session we will discuss the continued relevance of SOA and how to apply SOA principles when designing and exposing services from BizTalk Server.

Session 2: This session shows how to exploit SOA principles when consuming existing services. We will also see how BizTalk can directly engage cloud offerings from the leading vendors.

Richard Seroter is a solutions architect for an industry-leading biotechnology company, a Microsoft MVP for BizTalk Server, and a Microsoft Connected Technology Advisor. He has spent the majority of his career consulting with customers as they planned and implemented their enterprise software solutions. Richard worked first for two global IT consulting firms, which gave him exposure to a diverse range of industries, technologies, and business challenges. Richard then joined Microsoft as a SOA/BPM technology specialist where his sole objective was to educate and collaborate with customers as they considered, designed, and architected BizTalk solutions. One of those customers liked him enough to bring him onboard full time as an architect after they committed to using BizTalk Server as their enterprise service bus. Once the BizTalk environment was successfully established, Richard transitioned into a solutions architect role where he now helps identify enterprise best practices and applies good architectural principles to a wide set of IT initiatives.

Richard maintains a semi-popular blog of his exploits, pitfalls, and musings with BizTalk Server, SOA and enterprise architecture at http://seroter.wordpress.com.

The event will be officially announced on the user group site in the beginning of August.