Integration Love Story with Harold Campos

Introduktion

Welcome, Harold. We are glad and honored to have you here. Can you please tell us about yourself and introduce yourself to our audience?

Thank you, Robin and Ahmed. It’s wonderful to have the chance to speak with you. My name is Harold Campos. I am a principal program manager in the Azure Logic Apps team, where I manage the BizTalk Server product and Host Integration Server product as well.

I was born in Lima, Peru, and I moved to Canada about 17 years ago. I’ve been living in Canada for most of that time, then went back to Peru for a period to enjoy a different climate, and now I’m in Toronto.

Which climate is better — Peru or Canada?

Peru has everything. Every kind of weather. It doesn’t get that cold, but it can be very hot in the north, closer to the equator. You can go to the beaches and everything. Canada would probably win the top two or three most beautiful places in the world — it’s just gorgeous.

Världsmedborgare — Peru, Kanada och perspektiv

What’s something you learned in Canada that you didn’t know in Peru?

When you travel and live in different places, you start to realize that we think we’re so different, but in the end we’re the same. We all want the same things.

In Peru, you have a lot of cultures converging over many centuries — people from China, Africa, Japan, other parts of Latin America, indigenous Peruvians, the Spanish influence. In Canada you see the same, but the process is very structured. It’s an active melting pot. You see people from everywhere, and you learn from every culture — food, traditions, ways of thinking. You end up becoming what some call a world citizen. You don’t feel like you belong to only one place anymore.

Saxofon, trumpet och musik i familjen

What’s something the audience might not know that you do a lot in your spare time?

Music. When I was in high school, I learned to play a few instruments — trumpet, trombone — and played in a local band. I was 14 or 15, traveling across cities and making some money out of it. I really enjoyed it.

I still play today. I have a tenor saxophone and an alto saxophone, and also a trumpet. I have a lot of music sheets and books. And I’ve tried to share this with my kids — one of my three daughters plays the drums, one plays the flute, and one plays the clarinet. My hope is that at some point we’ll all play a song together.

There’s also something on your LinkedIn banner — a piece of music. What is that?

That’s Summertime by Ray Barretto — a Latin jazz version of the classic. I fell in love with it when I was working in Mexico City and went to the hotel bar late one evening. Someone was playing it on saxophone and I just couldn’t stop listening. I’ve been playing it ever since.

Favoritverktyg i Azure

What’s your favorite Azure tool?

Logic Apps — I didn’t even have to think about it.

I fell in love with integration more than 24 years ago, and anything that does integration is close to my heart. Logic Apps is a product where we’ve brought a lot of the heavy lifting of BizTalk Server and Host Integration Server into the cloud. Host Integration Server is the most famous and mature product for SNA and legacy mainframe integration. A lot of those capabilities are now part of Logic Apps. To be able to do things in Logic Apps that previously required Host Integration Server on premises — that to me is amazing. And being part of the team that built it, I’m very proud of what we’ve achieved.

Favoritintegrationsmönster

The previous guest asked: what’s your favorite integration pattern and why?

The scatter-gather pattern. In legacy environments it’s very common to find multiple systems with information that has never been synchronized. When you need to query data from those environments — mainframes and other serious systems that have different usage patterns — you have to collect responses from multiple sources, aggregate them, and return a result. That’s scatter-gather. I find it very often in the kinds of environments I work closest to, and it solves a real and recurring problem.

BizTalk-migreringen och Logic Apps hybrid

Can you tell us about the BizTalk roadmap and where things are heading?

The roadmap for BizTalk Server 2020 is that we’re supporting it until April 2028, which gives customers roughly four years to conduct migrations. After that, there are two years of extended security updates — so until around 2030, critical security issues will still be fixed, but not feature bugs.

That said, nothing is preventing customers from continuing to run the product. I recently met a customer still running Host Integration Server 2000 on Windows Server 2003. As much as we encourage modernization and provide the tools to help, ultimately this is a business decision.

What our team is being very intentional about is porting BizTalk extensibility features into Azure Logic Apps. The rules engine is a great example. We saw a lot of excitement about that — not only from BizTalk customers, but also from customers who never touched BizTalk and found it very compelling. The idea of storing rules externally, designing rules, and pushing changes without modifying your workflows or applications is a powerful pattern for governance and collaboration across microservices.

We’re actively working on the general availability of the rules engine with additional capabilities. And we’re working on closing the gap between BizTalk and Logic Apps more broadly. The goal is to make Logic Apps the best home for BizTalk customers — most cost-effective, with less refactoring, and where refactoring is tied to real value. We’ll share a survey link for BizTalk customers to tell us what they need most.

Musik och integration — samma mål

You described music and integration separately, but they’re both part of who you are. What inspires the other?

When my daughter was practicing her clarinet for a Christmas play, she was playing her part. And in isolation, one tone, then another, then silence — it doesn’t mean much. But when all the instruments come together, that’s when you get the actual music.

The same is true for integration. You don’t integrate with just one endpoint. You have different systems, protocols, networks, patterns. In isolation they don’t mean much. When they work together, that’s where you see the actual business value. Integration is connecting the dots to achieve something beautiful.

And there’s a conductor in that story too.

Exactly — Logic Apps, BizTalk Server, Host Integration Server — they’ve all played that role.

Det mest minnesvärda misstaget

Can you share a memorable mistake from your career?

Estimation. When you’re in services delivering large, complex solutions with a fixed deadline and a signed contract, estimation is one of the hardest things. My biggest mistake was an estimate that said something would take six months and it ended up taking two years. I take a good portion of the responsibility — I was very optimistic. We also faced unexpected technical challenges. And when you’re leading a team, you’re responsible for recovering the situation, which means more pressure on everyone.

What did you learn from it?

I love gradual, simplistic approaches. Simplicity is your friend. We think that by making something more complex we make it better — and that is simply not true. Every time you over-complicate something, you create additional problems for someone else to solve. Sometimes we do it because of ego, sometimes because we’re too fixated on the solution rather than the problem. You have to focus on the problem. The solution is a consequence.

Framgång som relationer

What’s the success story you’re most proud of?

My biggest success is the colleagues, the friendships, and the relationships I’ve built over the years. A lot of the people I’ve worked with are still reaching out to me. I’m never disconnected. Every time I go to a new country, someone calls and asks to meet. That shows that I had some positive impact — and it’s bidirectional, because they’ve shaped me too. That’s what makes me happy.

Integration Love Story

You mentioned you fell in love with integration two decades ago. Can you tell that story?

It was around BizTalk 2000. I was working for a Microsoft partner in Peru — I was probably 22 years old. I started reading about BizTalk and I didn’t quite understand it. I saw message boxes, I saw ports. Then the more I read, the more I fell in love.

Microsoft flew me to Seattle for what they called an airlift. I saw some big BizTalk names presenting, and then I saw Host Integration Server and green screens — and someone presenting about how Host Integration Server did data mapping. That opened something in me.

I decided to get my BizTalk certification. I became the first BizTalk-certified person in Peru. And at the time — that was still early, even beta — it was just the beginning. I thought it couldn’t get any better.

I would never have imagined that one day I would be the principal program manager for BizTalk Server and part of the Logic Apps team. That’s the cherry on top of my integration career.

Soundtracket för en karriär

If there’s a soundtrack for your career, what would it be?

Take Five by Paul Desmond — the alto saxophone player. It’s a beautiful composition and I probably play it 500 times at home and never get tired of it. I’ll add the link so you can share it with the audience.

Fråga till näste gäst

What question would you challenge the next guest with?

What is the best thing they have accomplished by leaving home? Not everyone leaves home. What is their success story, or an anecdote that really stands for who they are — something that came from stepping out of where they came from?

Avslutning

Where can people find and follow you?

On LinkedIn at Harold Campos, on YouTube at the same name, and on X. You can also reach me by email at hcampos@microsoft.com. I’m always happy to help.

Thank you so much, Harold. It was an honor having you, and we hope to have you here again — in person next time.

Thank you for doing this. Congratulations with Integration Love Story, and looking forward to continuing to connect, work together, and integrate.