BizTalk 2010 Developer Training

This really is the most spectacular training resource if you need to get up and running with BizTalk quickly.

Microsoft have made available a BizTalk 2010 Developer Training Kit. Included in this are 19 modules starting with the basics of BizTalk and covering all the salient features. For each module you get a video presentation, the slide deck, a virtual machine specifically set up for that module, and lab notes.

I begged time off from work to stay at home and consume these, prior to starting a BizTalk-based project, and not having any prior experience with BizTalk.

I’ve been all the way through, listened to every video and done every lab. I’m very impressed – it was exactly what I needed, and I finished the course feeling like I was ready to use BizTalk, that I understood (albeit roughly) what each part did, why, and where you’d use it. Even the video is pretty palatable – it’s either the slide deck or a desktop demo, the presentation being given by a (more or less) softly-spoken American. It’s certainly easy to understand, and I didn’t nod off or space-out listening to it.

Don’t under-estimate the value of the virtual machines. I set up a Windows Server 2008 machine with Hyper-V in order to import all of the machines (included in the download pack is a batch file that makes this easy). One of the big stumbling blocks with getting to grips with a new technology is that if you run into any issues when installing or just trying to get to a point where you can experiment then it’s easy to get very technical, very quickly. If you don’t know the problem domain this can be really tricky to work around. However, each lab “just works” – for example, one of the lab sessions had me dropping in an XML file to a folder, processing it in BizTalk, outputting the results to SharePoint, viewing and amending in SharePoint and resubmitting to BizTalk before passing off to a custom-built webservice. It would have taken me a day I didn’t have just to install and set up SharePoint, so being able to log into an environment with everything ready to go, helps enormously. It means you can concentrate solely on what you’re trying to learn.

I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that I think there’s enough material here for me to go into business providing BizTalk training, if I wanted to. Interestingly at the bottom of the download page Microsoft even say:

USAGE: You are free to use this training for your own use and to train others. The complete training kit, including the Virtual Machine and the videos cannot be sold commercially although you can deliver training using these materials and charge for the training delivery and associated costs.

So, I think I probably could do! I might wait until I have a few thousand more BizTalk hours under my belt though!

It’s made me wonder why Microsoft have done this. I mean, it must have upset their training community a bit, basically providing a ready-made training kit. I’ve certainly saved myself training costs.

Well, in fact I probably haven’t, because I don’t think my company would have paid out thousands for a course. That’s probably the point. Big companies will always pay for the training, but given the state of the economy I image smaller companies have cut back on expensive training. And with BizTalk, it’s really hard to pick up just out of a book. I tried, and failed! Faced (I guess) with falling BizTalk license numbers, Microsoft wanted to do something to lessen the barrier to entry. I think this is a good compromise, and I don’t think it massively depletes the number of people going for training – because those people weren’t going to go anyway.

If you’re about to start using BizTalk for the first time, or are looking around for a cheap BizTalk training course, may I suggest this kit. It’s from Microsoft, it’s high-quality, it will tell you what you need. It won’t make you a BizTalk expert, but at least you’ll know what you don’t know.