When I started this blog in September 2009 I was working as a BizTalk developer for a financial institution based in the South West of England.  At the time I was developing using BizTalk Server 2004 and intended to use my blog to collate and share any useful information and experiences that I had using this version of BizTalk (and occasionally other technologies) in an effort to bring together as many useful details as I could in one place.

Since then my circumstances have changed and I am no longer working in the financial industry using BizTalk 2004.  Instead I have recently started a new post in the logistics industry, in the North of England, as "IT Integration Manager".  The company I now work for has identified a need to boost their middleware/integration platform and have chosen BizTalk Server 2009 as their platform of choice; this is where I come in.

To start with my role is to provide the expertise with BizTalk that they currently lack, design and direct the initial BizTalk 2009 implementation and act as lead developer on all pending BizTalk projects.  Following this it is my hope that we will be able to build on the initial BizTalk "proof of concept" and eventually implement a fully robust enterprise level BizTalk 2009 environment.

As such, this blog is going to see a shift in focus from BizTalk 2004 to BizTalk 2009 and at least initially is likely to include posts on the design and installation of our BizTalk environment - assuming of course that I have the time to write them!

The last post I made was the start of a chapter by chapter look at the book SOA Patterns with BizTalk Server 2009.  Due to my change of job I am currently "paused" half way through this book, and my lack of posts on the subject are directly as a result of the job move and the pending relocation of my family.  I am hoping to write about my overall opinion of this book sometime soon; so far it certainly looks like it will be a positive one.

Thanks for reading; I'm off to manage some integration.