Microsoft ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) Guidance for Partners, the project I've been working on, shipped yesterday. Finally, I can talk about what I’ve been doing…
OK, so it hasn’t exactly been a SUPER secret project, given that Lukas (see below) and I have been referencing it in presentations. If you saw our presentation at TechEd, we alluded to it (followed by a chalk-talk drilldown). If you’re a Microsoft employee and saw our presentation at TechReady3, then you heard an announcement of it. And, if you saw our presentation at the SOA conference in Redmond a couple of weeks back, you heard about it and saw a drilldown.
Now, I can talk, because the word is out….
As a follow-on to the ESB work I did at a major healthcare company, I have been working with Microsoft on what is now called “ESB Guidance”. What this means is that for the past year, I have been fully immersed in ESB-land, and loving it. I have had the opportunity to work with some very bright people, and together we have built something that many people, myself included, believe will have a significant impact on the BizTalk community.
The core team has been:
· Lukas Cudrigh, Technical Strategist, Microsoft (architecture)
· Brian Loesgen, Principal Consultant, Neudesic LLC (architecture, development)
· Marty “Who needs sleep?” Wasznicky, Regional Program Manager, Microsoft (architecture, development)
I have had the pleasure of working with Marty and Lukas for most of the past year on this project. Many MANY hours have been spent on this effort. MANY late nights too. In fact, I have never worked as hard as I have in the past few months. For a while, it felt like I was a subject in a "sleep deprivation and caffeine abuse" experiment. It was a massive effort by everyone involved. And, it shows!
Together we have built guidance that will help BizTalk developers create ESB-based solutions. Many customers are heading down this path, the ESB Guidance will provide them with a head start by encapsulating some real world experiences and providing pre-built modules.
Perhaps more significantly, the ESB Guidance team has contributed ideas, and helped shape strategies, visions and opinions around ESBs at Microsoft. It has been an honor and privilege for me to participate in this endeavor, and to actually contribute to Microsoft’s ESB vision.
Microsoft’s ESB Guidance is available to select partners in the BizTalk competency. Sorry, it is not broadly available at this time, and *please* don’t ask me for it. However, if you need assistance with your ESB architecture, strategy or implementation, Neudesic (the managed partner I work for) is always happy to help.
To quote from the docs:
Microsoft ESB Guidance, version 0.8, contains architectural guidance, patterns and practices, and BizTalk Server and .NET components that enable Microsoft partners to build large and small-scale ESB solutions on the Microsoft Application Platform. Microsoft ESB Guidance consists of a number of BizTalk projects including:
· ESB Core Engine
· ESB Core Services (dynamic transformation, dynamic routing, dynamic endpoint resolution)
· ESB Portal framework
· Exception Handling framework
· ESB Client application
· Namespace Resolution pipeline component
· JMS (Java Message Service) Interop pipeline component
Microsoft ESB Guidance also provides developers with a set of frequently encountered ESB use cases and sample scenarios that are maintained within the ESB Client application and can be executed with a dynamic set of parameters to demonstrate the functionality of the ESB Core Engine, the Core Services, the ESB Management Portal, and the pipeline components. Built using a modular architecture, many of the Microsoft ESB Guidance components can be deployed as stand-alone building blocks, providing ESB developers with the flexibility to customize and extend the standard reference implementation to match their specific SOI requirements.
This guidance package is currently available only to Microsoft partners in the BPI Competency. For questions about this package or to provide feedback, please send e-mail to esbtlkt@microsoft.com.
I’d also like acknowledge some of the other people that have contributed to this effort. Without their ideas, insights, and other contributions, this would not have turned out as well as it has. They are: Dylan Lewis (Kaiser), Dean Watson (Kaiser), Kris Horrocks (Microsoft), Tom Canter (Neudesic), Mickey Williams (Neudesic), Curt Peterson (Neudesic), Todd Sussman (Neudesic) and John Lee (Neudesic).
The press is picking up on this, here are some links:
http://www.cio.com/blog_view.html?CID=25511
http://www.crn.com/sections/breakingnews/dailyarchives.jhtml?articleId=193104205
http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/10/04/HNmsesbsoa_1.html
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2006/100406-microsoft-offers-esb-guidelines-for.html
http://www.pcwelt.de/mobile/pda/news20061005/582163/ (German)
If you are with a partner and have the opportunity to work with ESB Guidance, I'd love to hear your thoughts and opinions. This is, after all, a Verion 0.8 release. Much more has been discusssed, and many parts of the ESB landscape are still emerging.
I don’t know where this ESB “bullet train” is heading, but early indications are that it will continue to be a fun ride.