Integration Love Story with Sandro Pereira

Introduktion

Sandro Pereira, you are very welcome and we’re very glad to have you on Integration Love Story. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, it is a pleasure to be here.

I’m head of integration at DevScope, a consultancy company in Portugal. I manage the integration team that works both on-premises and in the cloud — BizTalk Server and Azure integration services. I’m a long-time Microsoft MVP. I was a BizTalk MVP, then an integration MVP, and now an Azure MVP. But my focus is on enterprise integration, because Azure is a beast. I have three kids, I’m a Star Wars fan, and I do like wine.

Vägen till MVP — en historia om utmaning och skrivande

Everyone knows you’re an MVP, but let’s go back before that. What drove you to become one?

I had no intention of becoming an MVP, to be honest. It wasn’t my goal.

It all started about 12 or 13 years ago. One of my bosses — a Microsoft employee who was very active in communities — was driving with me from Lisbon to Porto, about three hours. He told me I should start giving back to the community what the community had given me. I told him he was crazy, I didn’t have time. He basically insulted me in various ways. But that triggered something in me. Internally I told myself: you’re going to regret those words.

So I started creating my blog. I still use it as my personal notes today. I started writing, contributing to forums and wikis, and it became a hobby. I like to write. If you challenge me to go running I’ll probably say no, but writing became something I genuinely enjoyed.

One thing led to another. I was nominated — on the 1st of January 2011. I saw the email 11 days later. I didn’t know I was nominated. I didn’t nominate myself. I had no idea who did it. I was finishing work late in Lisbon, opened my email, and saw “Congratulations, you became an MVP.” I told the team: let’s go out, drinks are on me.

My advice to anyone who asks how to become an MVP: do not try to become an MVP. Do it for yourself, and the rest will follow.

Frågorna från Matias Lärka — Formel 1 i Abu Dhabi

Our previous guest, Matias, sent you two questions. The first: what was the deal with the Formula 1 photos on LinkedIn?

That was one of my dream projects. I had the opportunity to work at the Abu Dhabi Formula One Grand Prix — on the track itself.

Six years ago there was no integration there at all. Everything was manual. The driver for the project was a financial dashboard — they needed to automate everything financial. We ended up integrating the entire experience: tracking, cars, tickets, merchandising, everything.

And yes — I drove on the track. Not by myself, because on that day professional drivers were out there. But I was in an Aston Martin on the passenger side. A scary experience. I also went to the Ferrari Wall next to the track, and rode the biggest and fastest Ferris wheel in the world.

It was a success both professionally and as an experience. Abu Dhabi at night is amazing — during the day it’s just too hot to be outside.

Frågorna från Matias — att utmana Microsoft på scen

The second question from Matias: what’s the deal with hating on Microsoft when you’re on stage?

I love Microsoft. And I think the feeling is bidirectional.

I don’t hate Microsoft — I challenge them. It’s different. Life is too short to not have fun, and part of that is pushing each other. Microsoft tells me: test this product, give us feedback. And I do. But if they don’t take the feedback seriously, I’m going to say it on stage.

It’s about pushing them. They are Microsoft — they should be the best in the world. When I go on stage and say “why do we still have small windows in BizTalk,” it’s because they can do better. Someone has to push them, and it shouldn’t only be me — it should be the whole community.

I’m not hating Microsoft. I work exclusively in the Microsoft ecosystem. If I didn’t think they had the best offering, I’d go to another vendor. I just think honest feedback is how you make things better.

Favoritverktyg i Azure

What’s your favorite thing to use in Azure?

Easier to say what I don’t like, but let me try.

What I love about Azure is the flexibility — and not just in terms of processing power, but in terms of connectivity. You can integrate with Power BI, Azure AI services for OCR, and connect to so many things that a few years ago would have required enormous effort. The ecosystem makes it surprisingly straightforward now.

In terms of specific services: API Management and Service Bus. They are simple, almost stupid-simple, and yet they’re incredibly powerful. Service Bus is one of the oldest services in Azure — queue and topic, that’s it — but the concept is simple and the capability is massive. API Management is fundamentally a proxy with a Swagger definition, but what you can do inside it is extensive and very practical.

And of course Logic Apps, because it gives you that orchestration experience — the no-code ability to design and manage integration processes. It’s maintainable, visible, and even non-technical people can understand what it’s doing.

Functions are great too, but I prefer using all tools together, choosing the right one for each job. If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I was always against using BizTalk for simple proxies. Use the right tool for the right problem.

Logic Apps hybrid och begränsningarna

You mentioned Logic Apps hybrid — what do you think of it?

I’m excited about it. It will open a lot of new opportunities. But when a client has zero footprint on Azure and cannot connect to anything cloud-based, it doesn’t work. I have a client in a completely closed facility — no internet, secure environment. Even with the hybrid approach, if you need the portal, if any component touches the cloud, it’s a showstopper for them. So it doesn’t solve all the problems, but it does open a lot of doors for many organizations.

Det mest minnesvärda misstaget

What’s your most memorable mistake that you’re allowed to share?

One that still comes to mind is a project for a major telecom in Portugal. We were migrating to a new invoicing solution. The calculation of client invoices was being done inside the integration layer — against my will, but the project went ahead.

The first day in production, every possible alarm inside the company went off. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a higher-stakes meeting than that one.

What had happened: we calculated the total correctly on our side, but when we sent the invoice to the billing system, they were multiplying the total by the number of SIM cards again. So a client with three SIM cards at 10 euros each got an invoice for 90 euros instead of 30.

It was not my fault technically, but I was aware of the risk. That’s why it still comes to mind.

The other one: I once deployed something on a Friday — never a good idea — and when we arrived Monday morning, nothing was integrated. I had forgotten to start the application after deployment.

Never deploy on Fridays to production. That’s solid advice for everyone.

Framgångshistorier — Abu Dhabi och Rosetta Net

Do you have a memorable success story?

Abu Dhabi Formula One is both a success and an insuccess story. A six-month project that became three years. But I arrived at a client where everything was manual, fought long battles to automate the processes and prevent any manual intervention in the messaging flows, and three years later I left knowing that everything was automated.

Before our integration, creating a one-month financial dashboard took three to four months of manual work. When I left, it took minutes. For me, that’s a success.

Another one: a client called me and said they wanted the best person in BizTalk for a Rosetta Net project. I told them honestly: I don’t know anything about Rosetta Net. But I will help you. In the same call they asked when I could start. Three weeks later we had the client’s first Rosetta Net implementation. That feels very good.

AI — nykter syn på buzzwords och verkliga verktyg

You don’t seem as excited about AI as most people. Why?

A lot of AI today is being used as a buzzword attached to things that aren’t really AI. A washing machine that “knows” which program you usually use — that’s caching, that’s history. That’s not AI.

A lot of products need to have “AI” in the description or they’re seen as legacy. That I ignore.

But genuinely useful AI? I use it every day. I go to ChatGPT and say: do this transformation, give me the first 20 characters of this string, help me with this function. It provides the code, I validate it, and I use it. It saves me time so I can do more with my day. That’s amazing.

I’m 46 years old, I have three kids, and life is short. Everything that helps me work faster and better — I’m happy with. But I need to see the actual point. Some things make sense, some don’t. Good AI for coding and code assistance — that’s awesome. Buzzwords attached to existing automation — I’ll wait and see.

Lego, Star Wars och Millennium Falcon

At Nordic Integration Summit there was a Star Wars Lego set. Tell us about that.

This is our Millennium Falcon. It opens and you can play inside. We also have the R2-D2 we got from Nordic Integration Summit. We finished it already — it was a quick build.

We have around 86 to 89 sets in total. The goal is the biggest Millennium Falcon set. But it’s very expensive, and more importantly, I don’t have anywhere to put it. My wife would definitely say no. It’s about one meter by 75 centimeters. I think that one stays a dream for now.

Integration Love Story

When did you fall in love with integration?

It wasn’t something I chose. I was a web developer — I liked creating websites, working with back end and front end. Then I changed jobs and joined DevScope 18 years ago.

On my first day, I was told I’d be working in BizTalk, with the biggest telecom in Portugal, and that the person currently doing the job was leaving in a week.

I think that’s when I fell in love with integration — because I was thrown into it with no way out, and I found I liked it. I gained the flavor.

Back then there was almost no documentation, no information about BizTalk anywhere. My two bosses were certified in BizTalk 2000 and 2002 and they helped me, but the content that existed out there was scarce.

What I love is not specifically BizTalk or Azure — it’s the challenge. The challenge is the same regardless of the tool. Persistent message handling, guaranteed delivery, long-running processes, idempotency, dealing with flat files, CSV, XML, SOAP, TCP, FTP — these problems don’t change. The tools change.

I still see people today working with modern technologies who have never processed a CSV file. What is a flat file? These fundamentals matter. And if you’ve been in integration for a long time, you know how to solve these problems. You adapt to the tool. That’s it.

Every client is different. Every challenge is different. Even if you’ve been using the same tools for 18 years, each project is something new. That’s why I still love it.

Fråga till näste gäst — Steef-Jan Wiggers

Your next guest is Steef-Jan Wiggers. What do you want to challenge him with?

In Azure, if you had the power to remove one service, feature, or technology — what would it be?

And if you want to go outside technology: ask him why his favorite player is Pepe.

Thank you so much, Sandro. It was a pleasure having you.

Always fun. Anytime.