1. Windows AzureCustomer Solution Case Study00GIS Provider Lowers Cost of Customer Entry, Opens New Markets with Hosted Services<br />OverviewCountry or Region: United StatesIndustry: Information technologyCustomer ProfileEsri develops Geographic Information System (GIS) software that is used by more than 300,000 organizations worldwide. Based in California, Esri has 2,700 employees and annual revenue of more than U.S.$776 million.Business SituationEsri wanted to reach new markets by developing a lightweight offering that organizations could use to connect enterprise and spatial data, without having to invest in new on-premises infrastructure and staffing.SolutionEsri built the MapIt Spatial Data Service to work with the Windows Azure cloud services platform and the Microsoft SQL Azure database service.BenefitsGIS for everybodyExpanded service offeringsAccess to new markets“By freeing customers from having to make large hardware, software, and staffing investments up front, we’re helping lower the cost of GIS entry and increase the return on investment.”Arthur Haddad, Development Lead and Architect, EsriSince 1969, Esri has led the development of Geographic Information System (GIS) software. Governments and businesses in dozens of industries use Esri products to connect business, demographic, research, or environmental data with geographic data from multiple sources. The company wanted to expand the reach of its GIS technology by offering a lightweight solution called MapIt that combines software plus services to provide spatial analysis and visualization tools to users unfamiliar with GIS. Esri began offering MapIt as a cloud service with the Windows Azure platform, and now Esri customers can deploy MapIt with Windows Azure and store geographic and business information in the Microsoft SQL Azure database service. By lowering the cost and complexity of deploying GIS, Esri is reaching new markets and providing new and enhanced services to its existing customers.<br />Situation<br />The professionals at Esri understand that geography connects societies, people, and opportunities. More than a million people in 300,000 organizations around the world use Esri Geographic Information System (GIS) software—most notably, ArcGIS Desktop—to integrate complex information with detailed geographic data at local, regional, and global scales.<br />“We wanted to offer GIS capability to customers on a platform that enabled them to get started quickly, without the need to reorganize their data, develop an application, or ramp up on a new interface.”Rex Hansen, Lead Product Engineer, EsriSince 1969, Esri has been a leading developer of GIS technology, earning as high as a one-third share of the worldwide GIS software market. Governments, agencies, and businesses in dozens of industries use Esri products to manage staffing and assets across locations, perform complex analyses, and make more informed decisions. “Our customers use GIS to get more information from their data,” says Renee Brandt, Product Marketing Team Lead at Esri. “Most data has a spatial component, and when you look at that information geographically, trends and patterns can be identified that would not be intuitively obvious through spreadsheets or tables.”<br />Esri offers server, database, desktop, and mobile GIS software, as well as online services and mobile phone technologies. Organizations use Esri products to build GIS applications that connect almost any type of business, demographic, research, or environmental data with vast amounts of geographic data from multiple sources, such as maps, aerial photography, and satellite data. <br />Traditionally, GIS applications have been highly customized, complex applications that, while allowing organizations to work effectively with large amounts of diverse data, required a significant investment in software, hardware, and development, and a high degree of user expertise. For instance, organizations often have to restructure their database to work with GIS applications, a process that can require significant time and IT resources.<br />Esri wanted to reach new markets and provide an offering for new customers not familiar with GIS by making it easier to view information spatially, without having to invest in a complex infrastructure that it did not otherwise need. “We wanted to offer GIS capability to customers on a platform that enabled them to get started quickly, without the need to reorganize their data, develop an application, or ramp up on a new interface,” says Rex Hansen, Lead Product Engineer at Esri.<br />To offer a solution that was easy to deploy and use, Esri designed a product that organizations could use to work with their existing spatial data, without having to modify the database structure. In 2009, Esri introduced a software solution called MapIt that customers could deploy in their on-premises IT environment and use to integrate geographic data with information stored in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 data management software.<br />To make it even easier for customers to work with MapIt, Esri wanted to also offer it as a cloud service—hosted in an external data center and accessible through the Internet. That way, organizations could access the geographic data in MapIt and store their spatial data in the cloud, without having to purchase, deploy, and manage new hardware and software themselves.<br />“We wanted to provide a lightweight service that enabled direct access to geographic data and the data structures that people were already maintaining,” says Hansen. “We didn’t want to require customers to invest in new ways to organize their database or store their information; we just wanted to help them visualize and analyze that data on a map.”<br />Solution<br />Esri chose to offer MapIt as a cloud solution with the Windows Azure platform because it offered a short ramp-up time and familiar technologies that customers were used to working with in their own IT environments. Windows Azure is a development, service hosting, and service management environment that provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage web applications on the Internet through Microsoft data centers.<br /> The company designed MapIt to work with the technology infrastructures that many of its customers already have, which often includes Microsoft technologies such as SQL Server, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, and the Silverlight browser plug-in. Esri chose Windows Azure to take advantage of its easy interoperability with other Microsoft software and services such as Microsoft SQL Azure, a self-managed database service built on technologies in SQL Server 2008.<br />Because Esri built MapIt with the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 and designed it to work with SQL Server 2008, it takes fewer resources for customers to deploy and maintain MapIt with Windows Azure. “With Windows Azure, we’re in an environment that is ready-made to make the MapIt service function for the job,” says Hansen.<br />Figure 1. MapIt users can build ArcGIS API for Microsoft Silverlight applications that are hosted by Windows Azure. This application displays a map provided by Bing Maps, integrated with selected sets of census data stored in SQL Azure, and accessed using the MapIt Spatial Data Service. MapIt connects to Windows Azure to prepare and serve data for viewing in a geographical context. From the MapIt Spatial Data Assistant desktop application, customers can upload map data to SQL Azure and geo-enable existing attribute data to prepare it for use in mapping applications. The MapIt Spatial Data Service connects to SQL Azure and provides a web service interface that allows mapping applications to access the spatial and attribute data stored in SQL Azure. Esri also provides a utility that generates a Spatial Data Service deployment package to upload as a Windows Azure Web role.<br />To build the applications that display and use the data available in the Spatial Data Service, Esri developed the ArcGIS application programming interface (API) for Microsoft Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation (Figure 1). Customers can use the ArcGIS API to build rich mapping applications with data in SQL Azure or use application solutions developed on Silverlight and integrated with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 or Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010.<br /> <br />Esri released MapIt for deployment as a service with Windows Azure in November 2009. “When someone deploys MapIt on Windows Azure, they can write a simple application that allows them to use GIS without having to be a GIS expert. It’s mapping for everybody,” says Arthur Haddad, Development Lead and Architect at Esri. “Then as their needs grow, they can add more analytical capabilities without having to change the application; they can just add the specific services they need and use them with the data they have in SQL Azure.”<br />Benefits<br />When Esri released the MapIt service with support for Windows Azure, it developed a way for customers to try spatial visualization and analysis of their data without having to make an initial investment in infrastructure or staffing. Now, Esri can open new markets and serve its existing customers better with services that are quick and easy to deploy and manage.<br />GIS for Everybody<br />By making the MapIt service available with Windows Azure, Esri has made it easier for organizations to adopt GIS technology. The underlying technology is easy to work with and familiar, because it uses traditional Microsoft products. Customers spend less time deploying a solution and more time reaping the benefits, without the need to become a GIS expert. <br />“When someone deploys MapIt on Windows Azure, they can write a simple application that allows them to use GIS without having to be a GIS expert. It’s mapping for everybody.”Arthur Haddad, Development Lead and Architect, EsriCustomers can deploy the MapIt service in Windows Azure without having to configure and deploy new hardware and install software packages, which can take weeks or months and cost tens of thousands of dollars—not to mention the ongoing costs associated with IT maintenance, power, and data storage. “By freeing customers from having to make large hardware, software, and staffing investments up front, we’re helping lower the cost of GIS entry and increase the return on investment,” says Haddad.<br />Expanded Service Offerings<br />Esri can offer its customers ways to deploy new services quickly and easily with MapIt. If an organization wants to do a targeted marketing campaign or analyze a land-use action, it can deploy a new MapIt application in Windows Azure and begin applying spatial analyses to the information it already has almost immediately. Organizations with existing GIS capacity can use MapIt to deploy new services quickly without having to rely on support from GIS staff or request new hardware capacity from the IT department.<br />“Even companies that already have a GIS department have spatial data in other parts of their organization being analyzed on spreadsheets,” says Brandt. “They can derive more benefit and information from that data by analyzing it geographically. With MapIt and Windows Azure, we are giving them a way to do that quickly and easily.”<br />Access to New Markets <br />By introducing MapIt as a service offered through Windows Azure, Esri is opening channels with a whole range of new customers. The company is reaching new markets among organizations that traditionally have not used GIS, and it is expanding its relationships with customers who want to introduce GIS to other parts of their organizations. <br />Software and ServicesWindows Azure platformWindows AzureMicrosoft SQL AzureMicrosoft OfficeMicrosoft Office SharePoint Server 2007Microsoft Server Product Portfolio Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010TechnologiesMicrosoft .NET Framework 3.5Microsoft SilverlightWindows Presentation FoundationThis case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.Document published June 2010For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.comFor more information about ESRI products and services, visit the Web site at: www.ESRI.com Additional Resources:Training: Channel9 Windows Azure Training Course Download: Windows Azure Training Kit Download: Windows Azure SDK White paper: Security Best Practices for Developing on the Windows Azure Platform For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.comFor more information about Esri products and services, visit the website at: www.esri.comAdditional Resources:Training: Channel9 Windows Azure Training CourseDownload: Windows Azure Training KitDownload: Windows Azure SDK White paper: Security Best Practices for Developing on the Windows Azure PlatformWindows Azure Platform<br />The Windows Azure platform provides an excellent foundation for expanding online product and service offerings. The main components include:<br />Windows Azure. Windows Azure is the development, service hosting, and service management environment for the Windows Azure platform. Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage web applications on the Internet through Microsoft data centers.<br />Microsoft SQL Azure. Microsoft SQL Azure offers the first cloud-based relational and self-managed database service built on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 technologies.<br />Windows Azure platform AppFabric. With Windows Azure platform AppFabric, developers can build and manage applications more easily both on-premises and in the cloud.<br />AppFabric Service Bus connects services and applications across network boundaries to help developers build distributed applications.<br />AppFabric Access Control provides federated, claims-based access control for REST web services.<br />Microsoft quot;
Dallas.quot;
Developers and information workers can use the new service code-named Dallas to easily discover, purchase, and manage premium data subscriptions in the Windows Azure platform.<br />To learn more about the Windows Azure platform, visit: www.windowsazure.com<br /> <br />