Integration Love Story with Sebastian Meyer

Introduktion

This time we go all the way to Germany, Hamburg, and one of the most familiar faces in the German community. Sebastian, welcome. Please tell us about yourself, your background — and what’s your favorite German dish?

Thanks for having me, thanks for inviting me to your show. My name is Sebastian Meyer. I’m from Germany, I live near Hamburg — not directly in the city but not far. I’ve lived here my entire life. I’m married, I have two kids, and that’s what I do when I’m not at work.

I work for a Germany-based company called Quibbik. Quibbik is a consultancy specialized in integration, and it turns 25 this year — 25 years of experience integrating systems, primarily with BizTalk Server. Nowadays it’s Azure integration services and also the SAP integration suite and the SAP Business Technology Platform.

For myself, I started integrating systems in 2008, also with BizTalk Server. In 2015 I started my first cloud projects, mostly hybrid — a lot of workload on BizTalk and some in the cloud. That was the beginning of a 17-year integration journey, and I love every minute of it. I’m not good at front end, I’m a bad designer, so the back end is where I belong.

And the favorite German dish?

Kale with sausage, pork, and potatoes. In German we say Grünkohl. It’s a special dish for our region, especially in winter — that’s when the kale tastes best.

MVP-resan och community

You’re also a Microsoft MVP — congratulations on that.

Thank you. Last year was my first year as a Microsoft MVP, in the technology area of integration platform as a service.

What drove you toward the MVP?

The journey started about two years ago when I wanted to give more back to the community. I learned a lot from the community when I started in 2008 — people like Kent, Wagner, and BizTalk Bill. I thought it was time to give something back, and I wanted new people coming into the integration space to be able to learn from me the same way I learned from others.

Being in the community doesn’t mean you don’t grow yourself. There was a time when I was not able to present in front of people, and being active in the community shaped me into someone who now loves presenting. It’s been a very cool experience.

It creates a kind of responsibility that pushes you — if I don’t have that responsibility to share, I don’t have the push I sometimes need.

Favoritbok och bokhyllan i bakgrunden

I can see a bookshelf behind you. What’s your favorite book on it?

Enterprise Integration Patterns. It’s from the early 2000s — 2004 — but the concepts are still completely valid. It’s a very important book for anyone in integration. And another very good one is Applied Architecture Patterns on the Microsoft Platform.

We probably need new pattern books now about AI and the new patterns that are emerging.

Absolutely. The agent stuff and everything coming — yes, we need some updating.

Kulturella skillnader i internationella projekt

You’ve been collaborating internationally. What’s the funniest or most surprising cultural difference you’ve experienced working with integration projects in Germany versus other countries?

I remember one moment very well — about 10 years ago I was in an integration project for an automotive customer with a very large developer department in India. The cultural difference was significant. When you say yes in Germany, it means you will do it. A yes on the India side, in that context, didn’t necessarily mean they would do it.

After about two weeks, we had committed to delivering something, they had said yes, and nothing had happened. We had to present our results and it was a very short presentation because there was nothing to show. That was a real learning moment about cultural differences in international projects.

And how would you advise people to approach those differences?

Clear communication is the most important thing. You need a clear understanding of what the other person actually means. That’s especially true in integration, where customers often don’t know what they’re ordering — they just say “put those two systems together” without really thinking about how. Clear communication is how you bridge that gap.

Den märkligaste integrationslösningen

What’s the most unexpected integration request you’ve ever received?

I worked in a project for a manufacturer of heating system parts. The raw material was metal delivered on huge rolls. Each roll went into a machine that pressed it to a specific thickness, and before processing, they did a chemical analysis of the metal. The results were stored in an SAP system.

When a new roll was loaded into the machine, the machine needed the chemical analysis from SAP in real time — because based on the metal’s composition, the machine calculated exactly how hard to press it to reach the right thickness.

My integration needed to communicate directly with the machine. That meant communicating from SAP via TCP/IP, transforming the data into a TCP/IP telegram and sending it directly to the machine controller. I was working in the actual machine hall — completely loud, had to wear protective clothes and protective shoes — hacking away on transformations. Those were amazing days with BizTalk.

Integrationskärlek — vindkraftverken i Nordsjön

Where did your integration love story begin?

My first integration project was for a wind farm control center. In 2008, there were plans for the first offshore wind farm in the North Sea. All the windmills are controlled by a wind farm center software, and my integration was between MATLAB and that wind farm center.

In MATLAB they simulated thunderstorms, heavy winds, and extreme conditions. The integration needed to feed that data into the wind farm center software so it could calculate how to shut down specific windmills during a storm — to avoid overloading the grid or producing more energy than the grid could handle.

Seeing that work — seeing the software actually put down windmills in response to simulated weather data — was fascinating. You work with so many people together: the people from the wind farm center, the people from the MATLAB simulation, and then you bring it all together with this piece of software that connects them. And it worked.

That was crazy for me. That was the moment I fell in love.

Misstag som lärdomar

There must be an oops moment somewhere in those years.

There is. In BizTalk Server, I thought it was a good idea to use a global variable. I deployed everything to test — it worked. Then to production — it crashed completely. That made my first night shift, rolling back all the changes and fixing things. And I know exactly that it was the evening of a team event. My hope of making it to that event was gone after just a few minutes. I knew immediately what the problem was and knew it would take hours to fix.

Another one was in Logic Apps, early in my cloud journey. I was creating Azure functions with the same mindset as implementing local services with local caching. Then you deploy to the cloud and wonder why absolutely nothing is working — because of the distributed nature of the cloud. You have no idea when you start that journey. You learn it, and then the next time you know: that was the wrong way to implement it.

And then there’s the scaling side. If you’re not careful, you can trigger one million instances running at the same time, and then you’re stressed about how to explain the cost.

Gen AI, agenter och nästa era

Your shirt says Global AI. What’s next in integration?

There’s only one answer for me right now: generative AI will be the next big thing in integration as well. When you see what’s possible with AI agents, MCP tools, and multi-agent systems, I think they will help us a great deal in integrating systems.

I think we will reach a point where your job as an integrator or developer is just talking and chatting — with MCP services that call the right agent in the background and execute the work. But the developer will still be the orchestrator, keeping track of whether things are actually doing the right thing.

In two years, how do you see it looking?

Gen AI will be there, stronger than ever. I saw a LinkedIn post that said the IT department will be the HR department of AI agents — and I think that’s exactly the point. Architecting solutions will become much more important. The development side will be easier, because AI will handle the boilerplate. But architecting all these solutions — that will be the core human role.

Aviators Germany och kunskapsdelning

You’re organizing the Aviators Germany community. What sparked that?

The integration community was a missing piece in Germany. We talked to Kent and asked if we could use the Aviators concept in Germany — and they said yes. So we call it Aviators Germany, and it’s for Germany, Austria, and Switzerland — all German-speaking countries. We have eight MVPs joining our upcoming event in June, which is more than we ever expected. We’re very thankful.

With everything moving so fast around generative AI, community is becoming even more important — the people who already know a lot need to come and share. Without an audience, you don’t have the same need or drive to share.

Fråga till näste gäst

What question would you challenge our next guest with?

I’d love to see Mick Bätin on the show — and I’d specifically ask him: how the hell can Vegemite be eaten by all of Australia?

Thank you so much, Sebastian. It’s been really great to have you here and we hope to have you back soon to talk more about agentic AI and everything that’s coming.

Hopefully soon. See you again, and thank you. Bye-bye.