Derkjan Zweers is an Information Architect in the province of Overijssel, a regional government in the Netherlands. His primary responsibility is to advise the management on IT-related solutions. His roots in education—he holds a Bachelor of Education degree—have equipped him to communicate about his field of work in common, understandable language.
Previously, Derkjan worked several years for a governance agency as an IT Architect and for a multinational as a Desktop Manager responsible for the branches in the Netherlands.
Derkjan strongly believes in the necessity of one IT agency for the entire Dutch government. He is one of the initiators of the government platform of architects (PPA-Provinciaal Platform Architecten). The platform strives for standardization across the regional governments as a stepping stone to standardization across all government agencies. Service Oriented Architecture is one of the fundamental principles.
During the years 2009 – 2011 Derkjan participated, with the authors, in a major SOA implementation and experienced at firsthand how the theory worked out in practice. His experiences have reinforced his belief that SOA is not primarily a technical issue but rather an organizational one. It is concerned with questions such as the following: what are the objectives of the business and is SOA the means to deliver them? What has to change in the IT-governance? Do vendors deliver solutions that fit an SOA? These are just some of the important questions that are addressed in this book.
Apart from information architecture, Derkjan likes gardening and watching sci-fi movies, and he has an interest in everything that is out of the ordinary and does not fit our established patterns.
Howard S. Edidin is an independent BizTalk architect/consultant specializing in providing guidance and training for companies implementing BizTalk. He was first exposed to BizTalk about the time when “Soap on a Rope” was introduced by Microsoft. He didn’t get a chance to use it, until BizTalk 2002 came along. Most of Howard’s BizTalk career has been in contract work, which has allowed him to utilize almost all of BizTalk’s capabilities. Last year Howard established his own consulting company, the Edidin Group Inc., in order to expand the services he provides. Howard has been very active in the BizTalk community. He has contributed several articles to the TechNet Wiki, provided answers to questions on the LinkedIn BizTalk Groups, contributes to several BizTalk Administration blogs, and maintains his own blog http://biztalkin-howard.blogspot.com/.
Howard is certified MCTS in BizTalk 2010 and has been an MCP for over fourteen years.
Howard is also the co-author of Microsoft BizTalk 2010 Administration Essentials, Packt Publishing.