Major announcements from Keynote of Balan S. at INTEGRATE 2022, London

INTEGRATE 2022 is one of the largest Microsoft Integration Events, and this year it was back with an in-person event in London, from 13th June to 15th June.

Along with many amazing Microsoft Product People and Azure MVPs, the lead of platform services at Microsoft, Balan Subramanian gave an amazing Keynote and made some major announcements about upcoming features and services and the importance of Integration in large digital transformation projects.

Here is a brief summary of Balan's keynote:

Hybrid is here to stay

Based on many pieces of research and surveys, a lot of transformation is going to happen gradually. Many of the large customers, who are utilizing Logic Apps, APIM and other services, are still keeping their on-prem data centres and legacy apps, but they are building new applications on Azure.

Increasing focus on Event Hub in the Enterprise iPaaS model

Along with the other 6 major services, the Event Hubs was a new entry in the mix (not a new service though!).

Throughout the event, there were multiple sessions that were focused on Event Hubs. Balan mentioned that the focus is more and more on Real-time integration.

Azure Integration Services Momentum

Balan shared some of the stats that demonstrated how widespread AIS is in the market and the investment from Microsoft to continuous improvement:

Productivity boosters from Azure Integration Services

• Out-of-the-box scaling functionalities with APIM.
• Being able to build new customer experiences with existing systems and data.
• 500+ out-of-the-box connectors to expedite the automation of workflows with business systems.
• Event-based Serverless Compute options with Azure Functions.
• Building a robust developer ecosystem with strong GitHub and Azure DevOps capabilities.


Going from BizTalk to Cloud

This one topic has been a consistent one for the past few years, as the Azure Platform matures with its iPaaS services, more and more customers are now migrating from BizTalk to the cloud. Microsoft has re-visited the BizTalk Migration and tried to understand many challenges customers and partners are facing; they are committed to making the migration better and smoother.

A lot of this commitment comes in the form of enhancing the Logic App Standard, and it's been a common theme around the INTEGRATE event. Microsoft is investing heavily in the Logic App Standard.

Some of the short-term strategies that he laid out were:

• Creating patterns and practices content.
• .NET framework support.
• BizTalk Maps with assemblies support.
• SWIFT support.



The BizTalk Maps with Assemblies support, and .NET framework support, are certainly our favourite ones.

As part of the Medium-term strategy, the below items were covered.

• EDI/Integration account enhancements.
• Native XML support.
• WCF/SOAP Support.
• BizTalk Rules Engine Support.
• BizTalk Migration tool refresh.
• Long term strategy.
• Business Event Tracking.

The BizTalk Rules Engine Support and the event tracking utility have been widely anticipated and will certainly make migrations much easier.




Logic Apps & Connectors

Logic Apps and Connectors play a major role in Integration. Balan announced some upcoming features that the Integration Community will surely welcome!

• Enabled Logic App Workflows and the connectors to run on the same compute, to get better performance, lower latency and VNET security boundaries that apply to workflows, now apply to connectors as well.
• GA of managed identity support for connectors.
• Updated workflow designer to better handle complex workflows and advanced constructs including exception handling.
• Being able to white-label the workflow designer.
• Universal data mapper with any - any support.
• Continuous support for CI/CD with both GitHub Actions and Azure DevOps.
• B2B/EAI Capabilities without needing an integration account.

Intelligent Integration

• Plan on using the data to build an intelligence engine for visual designers.
• Something similar has been done on GitHub with GitHub Co-Pilot and coming up for Power Apps, where a natural language can be automatically translated into code.



Full API lifecycle

A welcome announcement on the APIM front was that Microsoft is taking the Azure APIM to the next level, from current Management (only) functionality it's getting a major lift with a full API lifecycle tooling. As Balan mentioned, Microsoft has partnered with third parties like Postman and Stoplight.io to achieve greater functionalities within the APIM. We can expect some sort of API Discovery features along with API cataloguing in a near future (about 6 months).

Some of the upcoming investments for iPaaS

• There were some long-term investment announcements as well, which may be in the works, but may not hit the market in a few months at least. Integration Catalogue, Connector Marketplace, Developers Toolkit, Integration Resource Grouping and Integration Hub are some such features.

Azure Integration Services - The Lego Blocks




Cluster Reply has been speaking about Azure Integration Services being a bunch of Lego Bricks, of different sizes and colours, and over the many years of being an Integration Champion, Cluster Reply has mastered the art of putting the right bricks together to make a better-shaped integration, that delivers high ROI for our clients.

It was encouraging to see that towards the end of the keynote, Balan described Azure services as Lego Blocks, and it's up to customers and developers to use them to build various integrations. Not to mention that this task comes with the challenge that you don’t have a single pane of view of all of the artefacts in one place. That is where the Integration Resource Grouping will be handy. It's similar to Resource Groups, but with Integration Resource Groups, you will be able to manage the boundaries of all the integration solutions.

The closing notes emphasized again with “Integration is Everything" thought. Business depends on all kinds of Mission Critical Applications. And is very critical to integrate them well to get exponential value out of them. Without a proper integration solution, the value is lost.





What do we (at Cluster Reply) think about the keynote?

• Long seen more as a necessary evil or the 'plumbing' of the IT industry, it's encouraging to see the growing recognition of integration as a key enabler of business and digital transformation confirmed by the messaging in Balan's keynote.
• It has been possible to build enterprise integration in Azure for several years - Cluster Reply has been doing so for over 7 years! The latest announcements show Microsoft's commitment to maturing the tools in AIS, maximising the reuse of existing integration artefacts, and enhancing developer productivity in cloud integration.
• Unlike other integration platforms which require significant effort to upgrade, Azure Integration Services is an evergreen platform which will receive these updates seamlessly as Microsoft release them to the general public. Now is a great time to adopt AIS and benefit from the great work Microsoft has already done and will do in the near future.
• It is great to hear that attention is being given to extending the operational aspects of AIS with Integration Resource Groups and the Integration Hub.This will help everyone support and operate their enterprise integration workloads running in Azure.

Cluster Reply has over 20 years of integration experience, with 7 years of building solutions with Azure, and we'd love to help you start and enhance your cloud integration journey. If you'd like to hear more, keep your eyes peeled for a webinar to play back our take on the most exciting announcements from Integrate and what they mean for you.

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