1.
“We
use
Microsoft
Azure
to
achieve
tremendous
value,
scale,
and
efficiency
for
our
enterprise
customers.
We‘re
saving
more
of
two
things
always
in
short
supply
at
a
startup:
time
and
money—even
compared
to
Amazon.“
Keith
Puckett,
CEO,
BookedOut
Almost
every
startup
hosts
its
technology
in
the
cloud.
But
the
smart
ones
do
it
in
Microsoft
Azure.
Just
ask
BookedOut,
which
aims
to
deliver
the
“uberification”
of
freelancer
engagement
for
advertising,
marketing,
and
experiential
agencies.
With
Azure,
it
saves
US$250,000
and
accelerates
development
by
30
percent.
Now
it’s
eyeing
Azure
to
mine
data
insights,
which
will
make
its
platform
even
more
valuable
to
its
enterprise
clients.
A
disruptive
model
for
labor
Keith
Puckett
believes
the
American
Dream
is
still
alive;
it
just
needs
some
help.
To
provide
that
help,
Puckett
and
his
partners
have
built
a
cool
startup
with
a
business
model
so
disruptive
it
could
be
the
next
Uber.
To
support
their
business,
they
decided
to
put
their
technology
in
the
cloud,
rather
than
buying
a
bunch
of
servers.
But
then
they
decided
to
do
something
that
not
all
cool
startups
do.
More
on
that
in
a
moment.
Puckett
is
the
CEO
of
BookedOut,
which
has
its
sights
set
on
the
US
labor
market.
Specifically,
the
startup
is
solving
a
critical
engagement
gap
between
advertising
and
marketing
enterprises,
and
the
highly
evolving
professional
freelancers
in
what
it
calls
the
event
based
“Gig
Economy.”
BookedOut
targets
the
market
for
freelance
and
contract
labor
to
staff
the
more
than
75
million
hours
of
brand
marketing
events—think
trade
shows,
product
launches,
consumer
marketing,
large-­‐scale
sporting
and
entertainment
events—held
in
the
US
every
year.
If
the
opportunity
is
huge,
so
is
the
labor
pool
pursuing
it.
Puckett
says
that
by
the
year
2020,
more
than
half
the
nation’s
workforce
will
be
freelance
and
contract
labor,
and
that
about
25
percent
of
them
will
be
in
marketing
and
advertising,
many
looking
for
event
marketing
work.
No
easy
way
to
make
a
match
Any
way
you
slice
it,
that’s
a
lot
of
people
Cool
startups
head
to
the
cloud.
Cool,
smart
startups
head
to
Azure.
Just
ask
BookedOut.
Customer:
BookedOut
Website:
www.bookedout.com
Customer
Size:
30
employees
Country
or
Region:
United
States
Industry:
Professional
services
Customer
Profile
BookedOut,
based
in
Chicago
and
operating
throughout
the
US,
is
an
accessible,
trusted
marketplace
platform
that
connects
enterprises
with
freelance
service
providers,
facilitating
opportunities
for
freelancers
to
pursue
and
work
events
with
the
world’s
biggest
brands.
Software
and
Services
n Microsoft
Azure
platform
− Microsoft
Azure
Cloud
Services
n Microsoft
Visual
Studio
− Microsoft
Visual
Studio
Online
n Technologies
− Microsoft
.NET
Framework
For
more
information
about
other
Microsoft
customer
successes,
please
visit:
www.microsoft.com/customers

2.
This
case
study
is
for
informational
purposes
only.
MICROSOFT
MAKES
NO
WARRANTIES,
EXPRESS
OR
IMPLIED,
IN
THIS
SUMMARY.
Document
published
April
2015
looking
for
a
lot
of
work.
“But,
to
date,
there
hasn’t
been
any
easy
or
efficient
way
for
advertising
and
marketing
enterprises
and
freelancers
to
find
each
other,”
according
to
Puckett.
Market
mechanisms
haven’t
existed
to
bring
freelancers
and
employers
together—at
least,
not
on
the
scale
that
the
market
now
requires.
Puckett
saw
this
for
years
working
in
the
advertising
and
marketing
industry
in
Chicago,
where
part
of
his
responsibility
was
to
create
just
such
matchups
for
major
corporations
and
agencies
that
wanted
to
hire
freelancers
to
staff
nationwide
events.
Every
part
of
the
process
was
manual,
and
most
parts
relied
on
phone
calls
and
paper,
including
hiring,
training,
monitoring,
managing,
invoicing,
and
making
payments.
“It
was
a
clumsy,
inefficient
market
with
tremendous
logistics
and
management
constraints,”
says
Puckett.
“For
both
the
freelancers
and
employers,
the
process
required
a
level
of
touch
that
wouldn’t
be
tolerated
in
many
other
industries.”
BookedOut
is
born
Meanwhile,
entrepreneurs
in
businesses
as
diverse
as
car
services
and
property
leasing
were
using
groundbreaking
technologies
to
disrupt
hide-­‐bound
business
models.
Puckett
and
his
partners
saw
it
as
the
perfect
opportunity
to
do
the
same
in
the
market
they
knew
best.
In
2014,
BookedOut
was
born.
Through
iOS
and
Android
phone
apps,
freelancers
can
submit
their
information,
images,
and
short
videos
to
bid
for
event
openings;
book
events;
self-­‐manage
event
logistics;
check
out;
confirm
hours
worked;
and
get
paid.
BookedOut’s
proprietary
algorithms
match
freelancers
to
gigs,
and
event
managers
can
review
the
results
and
easily
assemble
and
manage
their
teams.
After
just
one
year,
BookedOut
already
serves
more
than
40,000
freelancers
and
hundreds
of
major
agencies
and
brands.
According
to
Puckett,
the
efficiencies
are
remarkable.
An
event
manager
who
might
have
spent
weeks
to
assemble
and
manage
a
team
for
a
series
of
events
can
now
complete
the
same
tasks
in
a
couple
of
hours—and
likely
end
up
with
more
appropriate
freelancers
working
the
events.
Secret
sauce
on
the
back
end
If
the
mobile
apps
that
front
BookedOut
are
the
sexy
parts
of
the
solution,
the
secret
sauce
is
surely
on
the
back
end.
While
many
startups
opt
to
host
their
solutions
on
Amazon
Web
Services,
BookedOut
chose
Microsoft
Azure.
More
than
that,
BookedOut
developed
its
platform
in
the
Microsoft
cloud
using
Visual
Studio
Online
and
the
.NET
Framework.
“BookedOut
uses
Microsoft
Azure
to
achieve
tremendous
value,
scale,
and
efficiency
for
our
enterprise
customers,”
says
Puckett.
“We‘re
saving
more
of
two
things
always
in
short
supply
at
a
startup:
time
and
money—
even
compared
to
Amazon.
That
lets
us
focus
100
percent
on
solving
business
issues.
And
that’s
the
key
to
success
for
any
early-­‐stage,
high-­‐growth
company
that
wants
to
expand
quickly
and
continue
unlocking
tremendous
value
for
enterprise
customers.”
Saves
$250,000
As
a
startup,
BookedOut
participates
in
the
Microsoft
BizSpark
program,
which
gives
it
free
and
low-­‐cost
access
to
Microsoft
software
and
services
including
Azure,
Visual
Studio
Online,
and
Microsoft
Office.
Andy
Abbott,
Executive
Vice
President
of
Engineering
and
Technology
at
BookedOut,
says
BizSpark
saves
the
company
about
$100,000
in
out-­‐of-­‐pocket
cloud
hosting
costs.
In
addition,
because
Azure
Cloud
Services
includes
management
services
that
BookedOut
wouldn’t
get
if
it
hosted
virtual
machines
on
Amazon
Web
Services,
he
figures
the
company
saves
another
$150,000
by
not
having
to
hire
an
engineer
to
manage
the
cloud
infrastructure.
Speeds
development
by
30
percent
Abbott
says
that
Visual
Studio
Online
and
.NET
Framework
are
ideal
for
a
startup
looking
for
fast,
flexible
development.
He
uses
them
to
avoid
infrastructure
issues
such
as
spinning
up
dev
and
test
servers.
He
can
also
manage
the
access
of
contract
developers
to
code
repositories
as
well
as
deploy
code
into
production
in
minutes.
“With
Visual
Studio
Online
and
.NET,
I
save
at
least
30
percent
of
the
time
it
would
otherwise
take
to
manage
software
development,”
says
Abbott.
“That’s
hours
every
week
that
I
can
spend
on
building
better
solutions.”
Abbott
also
uses
Microsoft
technology
to
achieve
goals
traditionally
associated
with
much
bigger
companies.
When
an
enterprise
client
wanted
to
integrate
its
own
system
with
BookedOut,
Abbott
needed
to
build
an
integration
platform—fast.
“The
integration
we
did
with
Azure
in
a
week
looked
like
we’d
had
it
in
development
for
months,”
he
says.
“We
delivered
the
platform
to
the
client
in
a
highly
professional
way.
I
don’t
know
any
other
technology
that
delivers
that
functionality.”
Next
up:
Making
its
data
more
valuable
That’s
not
the
only
Microsoft
cloud
functionality
that
Puckett
and
Abbott
plan
to
use
at
BookedOut.
They’re
exploring
Azure
Machine
Learning
and
Microsoft
Power
BI
both
to
improve
an
already-­‐efficient
booking
process
and
to
give
clients
better
insights
into
their
BookedOut
data.
“We
handle
millions
of
transactions,
and
that
gives
us
a
tremendous
amount
of
data
from
which
to
mine
insights,”
says
Puckett.
“Azure
can
help
us
to
make
our
platform’s
service
even
more
valuable
to
our
clients.”