Karthik and I have worked together for over two years on Windows Azure BizTalk Services. It is a pleasure for me to introduce this book on Windows Azure BizTalk Services on behalf of Karthik and Jon.

BizTalk has been a leader in the integration space for many years now and is used by a majority of the world's largest companies for their mission-critical-systems integration. As cloud computing changes how enterprises run their business, it is important to bring this product to the cloud as a part of Windows Azure Platform. We started building Windows Azure BizTalk Services for cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-on-premises integration scenarios, targeting both enterprise and SMB customers. This new "built from ground up for cloud" service will harness all the power of cloud and yet make it simple to use.

In the world of modern applications and services, there is a need for IT admins and developers to comprehensively understand a technology such as BizTalk Services and apply it in their own IT ecosystem. This book precisely fills this need. This book showcases many practical, real-world scenarios and provides detailed hands-on walkthroughs of cloud integration to allow the reader to quickly understand the material presented.

I invite you to join the integration journey with Karthik and Jon as they uncover the capabilities of BizTalk Services in a lucid, approachable manner. I hope you will enjoy the book as much as I did and that it helps you to leverage BizTalk Services more effectively in your organization.

Vivek Dalvi

Principal Group Program Manager, BizTalk Product Group

March 2014