Summary: We are compiling a capability based, technology agnostic view of integration and providing implementation guidance based on relevant Microsoft and third party products. Just to give you an idea, below is the startingpoint of the taxonomy.

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Target audience:

At this point I am putting this together with SI System Architects in mind. However, it hopefully will be useful to anyone who's trying get a handle on what large scale systems integration involves. Drop me a line if you think this is helpful to you.

Goals:

*normalize our taxonomy around integration and use commonly understood terminology
*show how Microsoft and third party products map to industry view of capabilities
*help architects understand how the various integration capabilities can be implemented in the Microsoft ecosystem.
*provide guidance on when to use what piece of technology - especially when there are more then one options
*provide domain specific technology roadmap, evidence and readiness

Why are we doing this?

Couple of reasons.

1. Our current guidance is at two extremes. On one hand, we tell you all about what "Connected Systems" are at the 60,000 feet level. On the other hand, we have very good pattern and code level guidance on what integration is. Unfortunately there is a huge gap in between the two and it is pretty difficult to jump from the 60,000 feet view to the pattern bits. This work is aimed at helping you make "connected systems" real by providing guidance and serving as a pointer to useful Microsoft and third party resources along the way (such as the PAG integration patterns).
2. We recognize the need to provide guidance from a well understood problem domain viewpoint (ie. integration), as opposed to our traditional product centric approach.
3. Since our current roadmaps are focused on individual products - like longhorn or yukon, it is very hard to piece together how the problem domain of integration will change as a result of these individual product roadmaps.

Deliverables

There are two distinct pieces to this work:

1. Compiling a capability based integration taxonomy. this shows a complete stack of integration capabilities with description of each capability
2. Creating a product/technology mapping and positioning. this shows what technologies are available to support the capabilities and provide guidance on when to use which technology, advantages/disadvantages of each approach.

We are planning to provide these in the form of several whitepapers. These papers will be based mostly on information in this wiki, and of course we will acknowledge all contributors.

Let's get started

IndustryViewOfIntegration
CapabilityMapping