We know that it is rare in IT departments today that solutions do not have to integrate with other systems and even external entities. Systems just have to be connected to support the complex business processes and levels of automation that the business is demanding. Some of these systems are really at the core of the business. They can support operational functions like finance, human resources, and customer relationships. They can also be mission critical; if they stop for any length of time, the business would be significantly impacted.

We know that connecting systems is complicated and there are many choices, technologies, and products that play a role. Developers often build their own integration solutions and supporting infrastructure. The "last mile" of the integration problem is one of the hardest—how do you actually exchange data and messages between two systems—how do you hook them together?

The promise the industry at large has been looking at is the world of web services and service oriented architecture (SOA). We will never totally get to this world—there are too many systems, standards, and custom solutions that don't have "services" to call. But what if there was a solution and even a development framework that could on one end connect to these systems and on the other, expose the capabilities as "services". Let's call these "adapters". What if you could then hook these adapters into your integration platform and even into your own custom code? What if you could easily write your own "adapter"?

This book is all about how to take advantage of Microsoft's integration platform—BizTalk Server and how to use the various "adapters" that come with BizTalk Server to integrate with your line of business systems.

The Cloud is fast becoming an important part of this picture as well, to integrate with systems that live in the Cloud as well as to create processes and move data through the cloud. The book covers the cloud platforms being created to make this happen and practically how to do this today.