Windows Azure Solutions Series: Vehicle price providers save $100,000 through manageable software + services

Kelley Blue Book is a senior supplier that provides vehicle price information to consumers, car dealers, government and the financial insurance industry. Companies to use Microsoft. NET Framework 3.5 has developed information-rich, highly-transmitted web sites, supported by 2 hosted data centers. To save on managed spending and simplify infrastructure management, Kelley Blue book decided to host and manage its Web site through the Software + service model, and the company implemented the Windows Azure™ platform, which provides a straightforward process. As a result, Kelley Blue book saves capital spending on new hardware, enhances competitive advantage by focusing on delivering new features, and saves $100,000 dollars and more strategic use of IT resources each year on hosting costs.

Scene
Kelley Blue Book, first founded in 1926, has grown into a trustworthy car information provider. The company's main task is to provide automotive information and value exchange, consumers, car dealers, governments, financial insurance companies to use their information for vehicle transactions. At first it was a published book, and now Kelley Blue is also a Web site (www.kbb.com), which was created 10 ago. The company is based in Irvine, Calif., with 390 employees.

The site's 1995-year growth has allowed the company to continue to expand its business and provide new products or solutions. For example, in 2002, in order to provide consumers with real new car trading prices, the company collected data from thousands of bicycle dealers across the United States and analyzed their transactions, and introduced Kelley Blue book Value for new cars. In 2009, Kelley Blue Book released the "The Trusted marketplace", allowing consumers to complete car research, new and old car inventory research, and find the next car, all on its Easy-to-use website.

Today, the Web site of Kelley Blue book is built on the Microsoft ®.net Framework 3.5, supported by Windows server®2003 Standard keyboard-based system, and Microsoft SQL server® 2008 Standard Edition Data management software. The website has 14 million views per month; One-third of American car shoppers use Kelley Blue book to do a survey of their online car quotes before buying.

Andy Lapin,kelley Blue Book Enterprise Architecture Director: Because of the flexibility of Windows Azure, we can focus on building and delivering new features to our users-which adds to our competitive edge.

To meet the computing and data storage capabilities of the company's high-traffic Web site, the Kelley Blue book has 2 physical data centers-one major data center and one failed standby data center. The company has its own servers, but leases them to enable them to run on managed devices. As the company adds new features or products to the site, and the web traffic grows over time, Kelley Blue book adds more servers to its infrastructure to handle busy traffic transmissions. "When you exceed expected traffic or deploy new code and new features that require more computing resources, we will buy enough servers to handle the maximum load, and these servers will be permanent." Andy Lapin explained, Kelley Blue Book Enterprise Architecture Director.

However, with daily, weekly or seasonal site traffic fluctuations, the load is not evenly distributed over time. Therefore, even if the infrastructure is able to handle peak traffic, the company will have to pay for underutilized server hosting services during off-peak hours. "Lapin said.

Managing servers is also time-consuming. For example, to add servers to a failed backup data center located outside the state, companies must order servers from one vendor and send personnel to data centers, build and rack servers-processes can take up to 6 weeks. When Kelley Blue book needs to be scaled up quickly, for example, when the "Cash for Clunkers" is released in 2009, the new server takes 6 weeks from order to delivery, which is a inefficient model. Similarly, although companies are committed to reducing project risk, not every deployment is perfect. Sometimes IT staff find that additional computational resources are required when new code is deployed. "When we deploy new features and discover the entire datacenter failure, we're in fire mode-we need to get it back as soon as possible, or figure out how to roll back the code." Sometimes you can do this, but sometimes you can't. "Lapin said.

Although Kelley Blue book has the ability to handle peak site traffic, it is still looking for a more efficient solution. The company wants to be able to scale quickly to manage the increasing flow of web sites, while making server usage as cost-effective as possible during off-peak periods.

Solution
To improve the efficiency of its platform, Kelley Blue book explores the possibility of moving to a software + service model. The company has a fancy for 2 solutions: Windows azure™platform and Amazon elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). In April 2009, Kelley Blue Book decided to migrate to the Windows Azure platform, providing "cloud" services through Microsoft's data center on the Internet, hosting and managing solutions for Web applications and services. The solution has high availability and rapid scalability to meet usage requirements.

The company chose the Windows Azure platform partly because of the services provided by the platform: Windows Azure, a cloud service operating system, and Microsoft SQL Azure, which is used to extend storage to the cloud. In addition, Windows Azure is selected because of its pay-per-view mode, which allows the company to pay only for the processing and storage capabilities it uses. "We have to prove that the cloud model has meaning for us," he said. The Windows Azure pricing model makes it easy to understand and calculate the cost to use. Lapin explained. "The Amazon model is too complex for us to know how much we can actually save." ”

An easy to develop solution
Kelley Blue Book developers can use their existing skills to deploy code to the Windows Azure platform, which makes the implementation process fast and straightforward. For the most part, developers can reuse the original site's code, develop it in the Microsoft Visual Studio®2008 Professional development system, and finally migrate to the Windows Azure platform. "We don't force developers to write different code-it's still common." NET code. Lapin explained. "Developers do not have to make complex changes when deploying to Windows Azure and local data centers." This also makes it a wise choice to use Windows Azure. ”

The company moved all 27 Web servers and 9 SQL Server databases to Windows Azure Cloud, making Kelley Blue book flexible enough to deploy these servers to meet other requirements of the company without additional infrastructure investments.

Data persistence through Software + Services
To take full advantage of the Software + service model, Kelley Blue book chose Windows Azure's storage solution. "We want to make better use of the cloud model and other storage alternatives to ensure data persistence," he said. "Lapin said. The company analyzed and implemented Windows Azure Blob Storage and Windows Azure Tables.

To reduce the load pressure on an existing physical SQL Server database, Kelley Blue book is trying to move traditional stored relational data, such as editing content, to blob Storage, and access through the Microsoft-hosted data center on the Internet. It moves [hundreds of] MB of data to BLOB Storage, now and can access data through the datacenter, rather than through a physical SQL Server database. In the future, Kelley Blue book plans to move the physical SQL Server database to SQL Azure.

Advantages
Andy Lapin,kelley Blue Book Enterprise Architecture Director: Through Windows Azure Platform .... We expect to save $100,000 dollars each year-that number will grow as we continue to add servers to the data center

By using Windows Azure Platform, Kelley Blue book efficiently implements a cost-effective, resilient model for your Web site. By moving to the cloud platform for KBB.com, companies can save capital expenditures, including data centers and hosting costs. Thanks to Microsoft's enterprise-class services, IT staff are now able to focus more on more strategic tasks. Companies now focus on delivering new features and services to users, rather than managing their own data center risks.

Savings in capital expenditure for flexible outreach
With Windows Azure, Kelley Blue book avoids costly IT infrastructure investments in failed data centers and the flexibility required for rapid expansion. Whenever a company's Web site requires more resources and capabilities, or when a new product is deployed, it is not necessary to purchase additional servers, but instead to quickly scale up with no hardware investment, by using Microsoft's computing and storage capabilities and Microsoft-hosted data centers. "We are happy to have a flexible solution similar to Windows Azure, where we don't have to pay upfront fees and be able to deploy quickly." "We have the flexibility to make things progress as we think at a lower cost," Lapin said. ”

Improved agility to deliver new services
With the development of Kelley Blue book, it continuously adds new services and features to its Web site. Since 2006. NET Framework to develop applications, the company has quickly added new features. In fact, the company deploys new code every week. Without worrying about the efficiency of the site when new features are added, or the risk of each new server being deployed, or increasing server capacity for increased network traffic, Kelley Blue book can now focus on innovation and delivery of new products. The company is confident about the positive response to moving the site to Windows Azure – the key to helping companies stay competitive and stand out.

"Thanks to Windows Azure's flexibility, we can focus on building and delivering new features to our users-which adds to our competitive edge." Lapin concludes.

Reduce data center and hosting costs
With Windows Azure platform, Kelley Blue book can manage its Web site by using the Internet and Microsoft-hosted data centers. While the company retains the physical primary data center, it is moving the computing power and storage of the failed data center to the cloud. As a result, the company abandoned a total of 36 physical servers-27 Web servers and 9 SQL Server servers-and kbb.com the servers to support other products.

Kelley Blue Book analyzes and compares the cost of non-cloud schemes with Windows Azure solutions, which is expected to save $100,000 dollars in data center and hosting costs by using the Pay-per-view model of the Azure platform. "With Windows Azure, our fail-Aid data center saves a lot of money," Lapin said. "We expect to save $100,000 dollars each year-a number that will grow as we continue to add servers to the data center-and not include the cost of hiring maintenance data center staff." ”

More strategic use of IT resources
Kelley Blue Book streamlines the management of IT infrastructures that support its web site. Without deploying new code, applying service packages, and updating each server independently, companies can rely on the enterprise-class services offered by Microsoft. "With Windows Azure, we never have to care about updating the server or changing the configuration." "Microsoft has taken all this into account for us, and we just need to deploy the code in one place," Lapin said. ”

By moving KBB.com's non-cloud servers to cloud scenarios, Kelley Blue book allows IT staff to focus more on strategic tasks.  For example, IT staff can focus more on internal it tasks without having to manage the data center's servers. "We have a lot of work to do. Now these employees can work more strategically, without having to dwell on the data center. Lapin explains, in addition, because IT staff can work more efficiently, Kelley Blue book can hire new IT staff at a slower rate.

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