The fledgling liquidspace is rapidly evolving with Windows Azure

As part of the real-world Windows Azure series, I contacted Craig Knighton, vice president of Liquidspace's product development and technology operations, to see how the company saved $750,000 in the first year using Windows Azure, and compress IT management time to a minimum. Click here to learn more about Liquidspace's success stories.

Himanshu Kumar Singh: please outline liquidspace.
Craig Knighton: Our opportunity is based on the rapidly expanding ranks of mobile professionals and the new demands they bring to the market. Many people are entrepreneurs; others are managers or executives of their companies. In any case, almost all mobile workers need a place where they can work outside of the office and the place where they live. Liquidspace was founded in March 2010, and Liquidspace connects many of the devices in the designated area with mobile workers who need space here and now. We then search, subscribe, and even embed processes for these devices, both convenient and fast.

HKS: What's the first step in opening a company?
CK: Given the fast moving and competitive entrepreneurial space and the need to attract investors as early as possible, we only gave ourselves one months to establish a technical validation test. In order to quickly establish a technical validation test, we decided on the Amazon elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) platform, the success of the technical validation test is enough to win the wind investment gold.
HKS: Once you get the investment, what action will you take next?
CK: The next step is to create a solution so that you can use the beta version. This allows the choice of application technology and hosting platforms to work. With Amazon, we have to manage our cloud-based network infrastructure and update our own server operating system software. We have to hire IT managers--spending 125,000 of dollars a year on wind investments--for all of this. That's not a problem. It's even more expensive to build and configure our own data centers.

HKS: Why did you finally choose Windows Azure?
CK: We studied Google Apps (we dropped it because we needed to learn a new system) as well as Windows Azure. We can get more than just infrastructure as a service, as we do with Amazon, but a complete, fully hosted platform as a service. In addition, we want to develop Microsoft technology because we are familiar with them and because we know that this is the quickest way to get a good prototype.

Many startups choose MySQL on Amazon. But when we add management costs to that equation, we find that SQL Server on Windows Azure is cheaper. Microsoft has completely changed the economics of cloud computing.

HKS: What are the advantages of joining BizSpark?

CK: We chose to set up a data center and staffed, we spend about 250,000 dollars on hardware and software licenses, and 500,000 dollars on personnel spending, the first year of spending equals 750,000 dollars. A year on Amazon EC2, plus at least one technician management facility, costs about 100,000 dollars.

By contrast, as BizSpark members, we receive free and discounted Windows Azure licenses, as well as free tool licenses and production using Server software. We avoid the cost of hiring dedicated IT staff. As the proverb says, time is money. With Windows Azure and BizSpark, both.
HKS: How much money do you expect to save with Windows Azure and BizSpark?
CK: I estimate the first year to save about 90,000 dollars, compared to Amazon, 90%. We have just been established and lack of funds. Microsoft brings clear economic benefits – we develop it free in the short term. We didn't spend a penny on the fast start. Microsoft is completely exempt from escrow fees.

HKS: Other benefits?

CK: With Windows Azure and BizSpark, we save more than just money and time. No longer need a full-time IT manager, we manage Windows Azure environment for only 5% of the time. When we use Microsoft's tools, we automatically use Microsoft Management to deploy to a farm best practice. We don't need to spend time or trouble with engineers. For entrepreneurs like us, time is pressing, and this really helps us.