René Brauwers started his IT career as a web developer/designer and was primarily engaged with building websites using classic ASP. Soon, his focus got more drawn towards developing client/server applications using the 3GL language Centura/Gupta Team Developer. Around the end of 2002, he got in touch with the EAI/B2B/B2C/BPM world, starting off with WebMethods and did this for the next three years with an occasional side step to .NET development. This occasional side step got him in touch with BizTalk Server in 2005.
Currently, he is employed as a senior Microsoft Integration consultant for Motion10 (http://www.motion10.com) in the Netherlands focusing on BizTalk Server and Windows Azure. René can be contacted via e-mail (<[email protected]>), Twitter (@ReneBrauwers), LinkedIn (http://nl.linkedin.com/in/brauwers), or through his blog 'Me, Azure, .NET and BizTalk' (http://blog.brauwers.nl).
Abdul Rafay has been working on integration with BizTalk and other Microsoft technologies for more than six years. He works as an Integrator in a Bank in Qatar where he is involved in architecture, design, development, and testing of integration solutions built on Microsoft platforms, which mainly includes BizTalk, WCF, and Windows Server AppFabric. You can visit his blog: http://abdulrafaysbiztalk.wordpress.com.
Abdul has a vast experience of integration projects in the banking domain, and has been involved in projects integrating banking applications with core banking systems and B2B partners. He has previously worked with the largest implementations of BizTalk in regions like United Bank Ltd. Pakistan, and SADAD in KSA.
Abdul is a three times Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) in BizTalk and likes to share his knowledge and technical expertise on his blog, MSDN, and other forums.
Other than Integration projects and BizTalk, Abdul has previously worked as a web developer on technologies such as ASP, ASP.NET, SharePoint, and open source web applications.
Jean-Paul Smit grew up in a small town in the Netherlands, working in his parent's greenhouse. However, information technology caught him early and after graduation, he started to work in the greenhouse automation business in 1996. A few years later, he was involved in the first real Internet project at the Aalsmeer flower auction. From there Internet was the way to go and he switched jobs to work for the Dutch company Macaw, to work with Microsoft only technology. In 2004 he was introduced to Microsoft BizTalk Server, and from that moment he spent most of his time on application integration using this platform. After a couple of interesting projects he decided it was time for the next step, go freelance. Since 2008, he is working under his company name Didago IT Consultancy to help customers solve application integration challenges, not only using BizTalk server but also other technologies on the Microsoft integration stack such as WCF and SSIS. Among his customers are companies like Asics, KPN, and AkzoNobel.
He is the co-founder of the BizTalk Software Factory community project on Codeplex. This software factory assists with generating consistent BizTalk application structures in Visual Studio and supplying guidance while developing applications. The next step for BizTalk will be the move towards cloud computing and that inspired him to write some articles about BizTalk and Windows Azure.