Integration, the community blasting into 2017!

In the past, now and tomorrow I will keep saying that integration is relevant, even in this day and age of digitalization. Integration professionals will play an essential role in providing connectivity between systems, devices and services. Integration drives the digitalization forward by connecting everything with anything.

Integration skills are still in demand. A LinkedIn study revealed a top 10 with integration and middleware in top 5 with Cloud, Data Science, UX and Web. And the expectation for 2017 is that this will be similar.

Our toolbox is expanding from on premise tooling to cloud services; we have WCF, BizTalk Server, MSMQ to Logic Apps, API Management and Service Bus. Formats ranging from flat file, EDI, XML to JSON, several protocols open and proprietary, tooling from mappers to BizTalk360. It can be challenging yet much more exciting. My conclusion is more options, more fun, at least in my view.

In February I, will be travelling to Australia to meet up with my buddies Mick and Rene. And Rene is organizing a Meetup in Sydney on the 20th of February. And since I am kind of in the neighborhood, I have decided to pay my friends (Mark e.a.) in New Zealand a visit too. Hence, I will speak in Auckland on the 14th of February and in Melbourne, where Bill Chesnut resides. That’s three meet ups I will speak during my stay down under.

With Eldert I will be travelling around and our plans will look like:

• Saturday 11-2 – Monday 13-2: Sydney

• Tuesday 14-2 – Wednesday 15-2: Auckland (Meetup)

• Thursday 16-2 – Friday 17-2: Gold Coast (Eldert attends Ignite, Gold Coast)

• Saturday 18-2: Brisbane

• Sunday 19-2 – Monday 20-2: Sydney (Meetup)

• Tuesday 21-2 – Thursday 23-2: Melbourne (Meetup)

• Friday 24-2 – Monday 27-2: Sydney

Hope to see some of you there!

And that’s not all. The following month, March 25th there will be the Global Integration Bootcamp and the IntegrationMondays will start from the 9th of January onwards to end of April. And finally, there will be an Integrate 2017 in the UK and TUGAIT with an Integration Track in May.

Hence, there you go a tremendous community effort the coming months!

Author: Steef-Jan Wiggers

Steef-Jan Wiggers is all in on Microsoft Azure, Integration, and Data Science. He has over 15 years’ experience in a wide variety of scenarios such as custom .NET solution development, overseeing large enterprise integrations, building web services, managing projects, designing web services, experimenting with data, SQL Server database administration, and consulting. Steef-Jan loves challenges in the Microsoft playing field combining it with his domain knowledge in energy, utility, banking, insurance, healthcare, agriculture, (local) government, bio-sciences, retail, travel, and logistics. He is very active in the community as a blogger, TechNet Wiki author, book author, and global public speaker. For these efforts, Microsoft has recognized him a Microsoft MVP for the past 8 years. View all posts by Steef-Jan Wiggers