1. Windows Azure
Customer Solution Case Study
City Government Improves Service
Offerings, Cuts Costs with ”Cloud”
Services Solution
Overview “Windows Azure is the future for the City
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Government of Miami IT department.”
Conrad Salazar, Project Manager, City of Miami
Customer Profile
The City of Miami
encompasses approximately
36 square miles of land in
southeastern Florida. Its The City of Miami, even when limited by a tight
municipal government
provides a range of services
budget, looks for ways to improve the services it
to more than 425,000 offers citizens. The city wanted to develop an
citizens.
online application to record, track, and report on
Business Situation nonemergency incidents, but the application’s
The city wanted to improve its
applications that use powerful
sophisticated mapping technology would require
mapping technology. With significant computing resources. Further
shrinking IT budgets, the city
needed a solution that was
constrained by long hardware-procurement
cost-effective and scalable. cycles, the city needed a cost-effective, scalable
Solution
solution that would maximize its available
The City of Miami chose the resources. The city developed its 311 application
Windows Azure platform,
along with Bing maps, to
on the Windows Azure platform, taking advantage
deliver to residents its 311 of scalable storage, processing power, and
application, which takes
advantage of sophisticated
hosting provided by Microsoft. As a result, the city
mapping technology. was able to reduce IT costs, improve the services
Benefits
it offers citizens, and deliver those services faster
• Reduced IT maintenance than before. It also now relies on a cost-effective
costs
• Fast time-to-market
disaster-recovery model, an important benefit in
• Improved service offerings this hurricane-prone region.
for citizens
• Cost-effective disaster
recovery

3. “[With Windows Situation Despite working with less
The City of Miami in budget and fewer personnel,
Azure,] we don’t southeastern Florida offers its the City of Miami’s IT
citizens and visitors a tropical department prides itself on
have to worry climate with beautiful beaches, improving services for citizens.
about managing a a dynamic urban center, and a For instance, one service that
wealth of cultural, historical, the city provides is the 311
costly and recreational attractions. nonemergency telephone line
The city’s 3,600 employees used to record and track issues
infrastructure and work in 83 locations and rely on reported by citizens. By dialing
can focus on a centralized IT department to 3-1-1, residents can report
provide reliable, cost-effective issues, such as potholes on the
delivering new services. street, incidents of illegal
dumping, or a missed garbage
services that The IT department for the city collection. Residents are then
positively impact has not been unscathed in the issued a service-request
midst of a turbulent economic number to track progress of the
citizens and our climate and must continue to issue to resolution.
support the IT infrastructure To improve the 311 service, the
and ongoing initiatives and IT department wanted to
develop new applications, all of develop a Web application that
which offer key services to would enable citizens to track
Miami citizens. In fact, in three service requests online and
years, the IT department went also see other requests in their
from 104 personnel to only 80 area. The city had already
and, by February 2010, saw its converted one of its zoning
IT budget cut by 18 percent. In applications to Bing maps for
addition, the city was asked to enterprise and wanted to
further identify ways to cut replace some other outdated
another 10 percent of its Internet mapping applications
operating budget. Adding to this that disseminate the city’s
challenge, the rest of the city is spatial data to the public.
also operating under strict
budgetary constraints, creating Mapping applications are
a conundrum for the IT typically processing-power
department. With its shrinking intensive, and the IT
budget, the IT department has department was unsure that it
witnessed a sharp increase in had the server load and
the number of service requests computing power to handle
it receives to deliver new new mapping applications.
services, yet has fewer Compounding the issue, the
resources to address them. City of Miami hosts and
maintains its own servers and
has a five-year life span on its

4. server hardware and necessary, considering its
maintenance. The IT budget.
department can only procure
new server hardware once Adding to its server
every five years and must procurement challenges, the
predict server needs for five City of Miami IT department
years in advance. must also take into
consideration disaster
However, it is difficult to recovery. In the hurricane-
accurately predict load prone location, the IT
requirements over a five-year department must ensure that it
period with an IT department has enough server redundancy
that regularly develops new to keep its infrastructure
applications to support the city, running in the event of a
leading to potentially under- disaster.
supported applications and
poor application performance. Furthermore, the IT department
For example, the city previously struggled with an application
purchased a storage area development process that was
network (SAN) and originally time-consuming. Multiple
estimated that it needed 4 environments ran on separate
terabytes of storage for a five- servers for the building, testing,
year period. Three years after debugging, and quality-
the purchase, the SAN was assurance (QA) processes, and
using 27 terabytes of storage— different team members were
six times the predicted usage. responsible for each
“We can’t always anticipate environment. To complete a
what requirements will come project, developers had to
up,” explains James Osteen, submit separate work orders to
Assistant Director of each person in charge of an
Information Technology for the environment. “To fix a few lines
City of Miami. “As a of code—a task that should take
government entity, we don’t 15 to 20 minutes—could take up
have the luxury of upgrading to four days to complete,” says
our infrastructure whenever Conrad Salazar, Project
demand increases. We give it Manager at the City of Miami.
our best estimate and hope for “Most of this time was spent
the best.” At the same time just waiting for work orders to
that the IT department was be resolved.” As a result, the IT
concerned about under- department was occasionally
performing applications due to slow to respond to business
inaccurate estimates, it also needs.
didn’t want to overspend and
buy more server hardware than

5. To succeed at its mission to The city chose Windows Azure
deliver improved services to over other cloud services
Miami residents while remaining providers based on several
a cost-effective, efficient factors. First, the city already
organization, the IT department supports its infrastructure with
needed a solution that would Microsoft products and
offer enough processing power technologies, including the
and storage to host Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5.
applications with sophisticated “The bottom line is that we
mapping technologies. Any have a very small budget and
solution would also need to very few individuals supporting
provide the ability to scale up our infrastructure, so we have
and scale down—without to be very careful and minimize
requiring near-impossible the number of platforms we use
accurate predictions for to make the most of our
processing power and server investment—and we do that
load over a five-year period. In with the Microsoft platform,”
addition, the organization says Osteen. Second, the City
wanted a solution that would of Miami chose Windows Azure
help simplify and speed its because the IT department had
application development and recently evaluated the beta 2
deployment processes. release of the Microsoft Visual
Studio 2010 development
Solution system and was impressed
In an effort to address its needs with its seamless integration
for a scalable, cost-effective with the development fabric in
solution that would yield Windows Azure. (The
significantly more processing development fabric simulates
power, the City of Miami chose the Windows Azure
the Windows Azure platform environment on a local
from Microsoft. Windows Azure computer so that the city can
is a cloud services operating run and test a product locally
system that serves as the before deploying it.) Finally, the
development, service hosting, city based its decision in part
and service management on the pay-as-you-go pricing
environment for the Windows model for Windows Azure,
Azure platform. Windows Azure which it found attractive
provides developers with on- considering the budget
demand compute and storage challenges it faced. “The
to host, scale, and manage pricing model is easy to
Web applications on the understand and calculate,
Internet through Microsoft data which was a huge advantage
centers. over other cloud offerings,”
adds Osteen.

6. powerful mapping applications
Powerful Mapping Technology in a that require significant
Scalable Solution computing power.
The City of Miami teamed with
Microsoft Gold Certified Partner The City of Miami used an off-
ISC, a provider of rich, the-shelf product from ISC
interactive mapping software called MapDotNet UX, which
for geospatial visualization and provides rich, interactive
analysis, to develop the city’s geospatial visualization and
311 application, which is hosted analysis. The latest version of
entirely over the Internet. With MapDotNet UX is built
the nearly limitless processing specifically for Windows Azure
power offered by Windows and includes prepackaged Web
Azure, the City of Miami can services and a template for the
easily implement more Microsoft Silverlight 3 browser
plug-in that integrates with
Windows Azure storage
services and with Bing maps for
enterprise. The city uses Blob
Storage to store spatial data,
originally in a common shapefile
or Keyhole Markup Language
Built on Windows Azure, the
format, which are both popular
Miami 311 application enables
formats for geospatial data.
citizens to report and track
nonemergency incidents.
Easy Development and Deployment
Developers at the City of Miami
are excited about the
development experience with
Windows Azure. They can take
the Silverlight template and
compile it to a local
development fabric. Then, they
can extend application
functionality or deploy it directly
to Windows Azure. “With a
local fabric, developers are able
to quickly promote applications
between development, staging,
and production environments.
They can do everything from
their local instance, which
results in quicker delivery of
solutions to our clients: the
citizens and businesses,” says
Osteen.

7. “The pricing model positioning system location, and
In addition, with the a description directly from their
is easy to development fabric of Windows Windows phone or Apple
Azure, applications are isolated iPhone. In addition, the city
understand and from one another and could send status updates and
calculate, which developers are not concerned notifications to users by e-mail
about new applications or message or short message
was a huge feature upgrades interfering service (SMS). “Windows
with existing applications. This Azure is the future for the City
advantage over also helps make for a cost- of Miami IT department,” sums
other cloud effective solution when the city Salazar.
is procuring server hardware.
offerings.” “With our five-year purchasing Benefits
cycle, we had to make sure to By using the Windows Azure
put as many compatible platform, the City of Miami
services on one server,” efficiently implemented its 311
explains Salazar. “When we nonemergency response
made upgrades, it could cause application. The scalable
us to spend more time solution, which has near
modifying and fine-tuning our limitless storage and
code because we’d find that processing power, enables the
the applications interfered with city to reduce costs—critical to
an existing production the department’s success in a
application. Because Windows global economic crisis. In
Azure isolates applications, we addition, the city is able to bring
don’t have to worry about that new applications to market
and have much cleaner more quickly and has improved
deployments.” its ability to offer new,
enhanced services to Miami
Opportunities for Future Development residents. And by relying on
The cost-effective solution and hosting at Microsoft data
easy development and centers, the hurricane-prone
deployment processes open city improved its disaster-
the door for the IT department recovery strategy.
at the City of Miami to continue
enhancing existing services and Reduced IT Costs
developing new services for With a tight IT budget that
citizens. After the initial launch continues to shrink, the City of
of the 311 solution in March Miami runs lean IT operations
2010, developers plan to add and relies on an easily
more functionality to the managed IT infrastructure. With
application, including the ability Windows Azure, the city can
for users to submit service eliminate much of its need to
requests with photos, global procure, host, and manage its

8. “With Windows own physical servers— Azure, developers can build and
representing a 75 percent deploy applications from the
Azure and the savings in the first year over same local instance, eliminating
hosting the application on the need for an unnecessarily
ability to deploy premises. It also does not need protracted testing, debugging,
locally, we’re able to redirect valuable developer and QA process. As a result,
resources or hire additional the IT department is able to
to speed up our staff to deploy and manage the deploy new solutions to citizens
server infrastructure. Instead, quickly. “We already had an
time-to-market.” because the solution is hosted efficient development team,
Conrad Salazar, Project by Microsoft, the city can rely and developing in Windows
Manager, on enterprise-class service for Azure is equally as fast since
City of Miami maintenance tasks. we already use Visual Studio
2010, the C# programming
The ability to scale vertically language, and the .NET
and horizontally also enables Framework,” explains Salazar.
the IT department to reduce “However, with Windows Azure
costs. Instead of running the and the ability to deploy locally,
risk of buying too much server we’re able to speed up our
hardware during its five-year time-to-market.”
procurement cycle, the city can
now forego an often inaccurate Greater Ability to Offer New Services to
process for estimating storage Citizens
and processing needs, and Citywide budget cuts mean that
simply use, and pay for, what it fewer personnel are trying to
needs to run its applications. accomplish more with fewer
During peak traffic, such as resources, including looking for
during hurricane season, the ways to automate processes
city can increase its server while still improving services.
capacity in the Windows Azure “Even though the IT
environment and then scale department is equally affected
down when the peak period is in terms of budget, everyone
over. relies on technology even more
in a budget crunch,” says
Fast Time-to-Market Osteen. “With Windows Azure,
Previously, developers at the we’re relying on a trustworthy
City of Miami had to use several solution—everything is hosted at
different development Microsoft in data centers in
environments, each managed multiple geographic locations—
by a different team member, to make things simpler for our
causing delays in the amount of organization. We don’t have to
time it took to deploy worry about managing a costly
applications. Now, with the infrastructure and can focus on
development fabric in Windows delivering new services that

9. positively impact citizens and Improved, Cost-Effective Disaster
our organization.” Recovery
The Miami area is often faced
with destructive hurricanes, and
while there is a recognized
hurricane season, the storms
are unpredictable. Previously,
the IT department for the city
had to ensure that it had
enough servers for disaster-
recovery purposes, resulting in
a number of extra, underused
servers during periods of low
demand. With Windows Azure,
the city is not only confident in
its disaster recovery across
Microsoft data centers, but it
will also be able to eliminate the
need for unused server
hardware previously used in the
event of catastrophic events,
such as hurricanes, further
avoiding unnecessary expenses
for the city and its citizens.

10. For More Information Windows Azure Platform control for REST Web
For more information about The Windows Azure platform services.
Microsoft products and provides an excellent • Microsoft SQL Azure. Microsoft
services, call the Microsoft foundation for expanding online SQL Azure offers the first
Sales Information Center at product and service offerings. cloud-based relational and
(800) 426-9400. In Canada, The main components include: self-managed database
service built on Microsoft SQL
call the Microsoft Canada • Windows Azure. Windows Azure
Server 2008 technologies.
Information Centre at (877) is the development, service
568-2495. Customers in the hosting, and service To learn more about the Windows
United States and Canada management environment for Azure platform, visit:
who are deaf or hard-of- the Windows Azure platform. www.windowsazure.com
hearing can reach Microsoft Windows Azure provides
text telephone (TTY/TDD) developers with on-demand
services at (800) 892-5234. compute and storage to host,
Outside the 50 United States scale, and manage Web
and Canada, please contact applications on the Internet
your local Microsoft through Microsoft data
subsidiary. To access centers. In addition, Windows
information using the World Azure serves developers’
Wide Web, go to: connectivity needs through
www.microsoft.com the following services.
• Windows Azure AppFabric.
For more information about
Windows Azure AppFabric
ISC products and services,
enables users to build and
call (850) 893-6741 or visit the
manage applications more
Web site at: www.goisc.com
easily both on-premises and
in the cloud.
For more information about
〉 The AppFabric Service Bus
the City of Miami, call (888)
311-3233 or visit the Web site connects services and
applications across
at:
network boundaries to
www.miamigov.com help developers build
distributed applications.
Additional Resources: 〉 The AppFabric Access Control
Download: Windows Azure
Tools and SDK provides federated,
claims-based access
View: Architecting and
Developing for Windows
Azure
Software and Services • Microsoft Visual Studio
• Windows Azure Platform − Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
− Windows Azure • Technologies
− Blob Storage − Microsoft .NET Framework
• Bing Maps for Enterprise 3.5
− Microsoft Silverlight 3
This case study is for informational
Partners
purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO • ISC
WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN
THIS SUMMARY.
Document published February 2010