Insights from Kent Weare: Integration as a strategic enabler for businesses
The pace of technological advancement shows no sign of slowing down, the integration landscape is rapidly evolving. To explore these shifts and what they mean for businesses, we had the opportunity to interview Kent Weare, Principal PM Manager at Microsoft and a keynote speaker at the Nordic Integration Summit. Weare shared his thoughts on the future of integration, how organizations can leverage the power of generative AI (GenAI) and the opportunities of hybrid integration models.
About Kent Weare:
Kent Weare is a Principal PM Manager at Microsoft, leading the Azure Logic Apps team. With over 5 years at Microsoft and a career spanning multiple industries like government, energy, and healthcare.
Integration as a strategic driver
Weare's passion for integration has driven his career for over two decades. His fascination with integration lies in its power to connect disparate systems that were never designed to work together, enabling companies to achieve business outcomes they would otherwise miss.
"Integration has always intrigued me," said Weare. "The ability to connect systems and applications from different companies and industries is key to unlocking new capabilities."
Integration is no longer just about connecting, it’s a strategic enabler for businesses.
Integration, that was once viewed as back-end infrastructure, is now a strategic tool for innovation. With technologies like Generative AI, businesses can not only move data between systems but also extract real-time intelligence from it, accelerating decisions and improving customer experiences.
Weare emphasizes that tools like Azure Logic Apps are making this process easier, especially with the rise of hybrid integration models that offer companies more flexibility in managing their data infrastructure.
Nordic Integration Summit: A hub for collaboration
Reflecting on this year's Nordic Integration Summit, Weare highlighted the strong community spirit that exists around integration in the Nordics. The summit brings together experts and practitioners from various sectors and has become a crucial platform for sharing knowledge and fostering collaboration.
"The community here is incredibly passionate about integration. It’s an opportunity to meet people from diverse industries and geographies, and there’s always a lot of excitement around exchanging ideas. Events like this are essential for pushing the industry forward."
Connecting GenAI with integration
One key focus of Weare’s keynote address at the summit was how to leverage Generative AI into integration. While GenAI is often surrounded by buzzwords, Weare aimed to bring clarity by showcasing practical applications of the technology. He also emphasized that many companies are already leveraging GenAI at scale, dispelling the notion that it is still a distant concept.
"One of the challenges is that people struggle to connect the hype around GenAI with real, tangible use cases," Weare said. "In my keynote, I shared customer success stories to show that it’s not just theoretical. Companies are using this technology in production today."
The real value lies in how businesses can enrich their existing processes with GenAI, using the data they are already integrating to drive further innovation.
Weare also demonstrated how Microsoft’s Logic Apps templates can simplify the process of integrating GenAI into existing systems.
"I created four demos to inspire attendees on how they can take their integration strategies forward. We also introduced new templates in Logic Apps Standard, which simplify the process. In fact, with these templates, you can get started and have something up and running in just about an hour, which I think is pretty cool."
The opportunities of a hybrid integrations
Weare also discussed the Microsoft's hybrid deployment model for Logic Apps. This model allows organizations to run Logic Apps both in the cloud and on customer-managed infrastructure, such as on-premises systems.
"Hybrid integration is a game-changer for customers who need to manage their infrastructure but still want to take advantage of modern integration stacks like Logic Apps," Weare said.
The best part is that it doesn’t require rearchitecting. The same solution can be deployed either on-premises or in the cloud, without any changes to the underlying architecture. It really becomes a matter of building the same way, but then choose where you want to go ahead and deploy it.
Key takeaways for businesses
When asked about the key messages he wanted to leave with attendees, Weare's advice was simple: get started. He encouraged organizations to start exploring GenAI and hybrid integration, even if they are not ready to go live immediately.
"Whether it’s using our Logic Apps templates to experiment with GenAI or exploring hybrid deployment options, the barriers to entry are lower than ever," he said. "Start small, learn, and iterate. The technology will only improve, and it’s important to stay ahead of the curve."
Looking ahead, Weare sees a future where integration becomes even more critical to business success, and the tools used to build integrations continue to evolve. "In three years, the way we build integrations will look very different," he predicted. "AI will play a bigger role in automating and orchestrating integration processes, making them more efficient and responsive to business needs."
