Microsoft Server Product PortfolioCustomer Solution Case Study

Data Provider Increases Agility and Speeds Performance with Innovative Cloud Service

OverviewCountry or Region: United StatesIndustry: Professional services—Data services

Customer ProfileBased in Atlanta, Georgia, Edgenet helps companies use the Internet to share accurate product data and increase sales. The privately held company operates three locations in the United States.

Business SituationEdgenet needed a highly scalable, mission-critical platform that could deliver accurate data about more than 600,000 products to search engines, applications, and mobile devices.

SolutionThe company created an innovative cloud-based offering based on NEC hardware and the Microsoft platform, including Windows Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2.

Benefits Facilitates innovation and accuracy Increases agility, speeds performance,

and minimizes costs Boosts simplicity and efficiency Improves data insight and customer

satisfaction

Because IT personnel can control how SQL Server 2008 R2 uses specific resources, Edgenet has improved its agility, reduced system response times, and sped the overall performance of its databases.

More than 2,500 companies depend on Edgenet to manage and distribute product information about 600,000 products to websites and applications. To help its customers adapt to changing business requirements, improve accuracy and data insight, reduce complexity, and speed system response times, Edgenet developed an innovative product data management and distribution solution based on the Microsoft platform. The cloud-based solution—which includes Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot for Microsoft SharePoint, NEC hardware, and 6 terabytes of data—simplifies and automates mission-critical processes for 15,000 users. With its solution, Edgenet has increased agility, sped system performance, reduced costs, and minimized complexity. It has also facilitated efficiency for employees and customers, improved data insight for all users, and enhanced customer satisfaction.

SituationSince 1995, Edgenet has provided applications and services that help suppliers, distributors, and retailers of all sizes manage the accuracy and consistency of product information. The privately held company manages data about more than 600,000 products for more than 2,500 organizations. It also delivers this product information to numerous endpoints such as websites and third-party applications.

To make data available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the company built its mission-critical infrastructure with the Microsoft platform including the Windows Server 2008 Enterprise operating system and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise data management software. As a result, the company’s systems have delivered high levels of reliability. Up to 15,000 users access Edgenet systems. At peak times, as many as 8,000 people use the infrastructure simultaneously. In addition, each day, users typically make about 150,000 changes to product information. However, on some days the systems support millions of changes to product data.

Helping companies manage and share accurate and up-to-date information about deliverables is more important than ever.

The Internet and technologies like wireless networks have revolutionized the nature of shopping and increased consumers’ demand for product information from any location using Internet-enabled devices. Because suppliers must distribute product information to so many endpoints, most invest significant time and money managing data entry, certification, and distribution processes—which traditionally have been done manually. For example, employees must input product information into a data management system, identify attributes that customers may search for, update the information at every endpoint when changes occur, and continually certify all instances for accuracy. In addition, companies often struggle to present consistent wording and messaging in product information because employees frequently lack tools that enforce content guidelines or quality standards.

Internet-savvy consumers seek data that differentiates products. Vendors who can meet this need for accurate, detailed, and consistent information can increase web traffic, the viability of products, and sales.Edgenet recognized that it could use its extensive third-party data pools to help vendors reach more customers. It could achieve this by expanding the scope of its product data management solution to facilitate data analysis, simplify data certification, and streamline the processes for distributing information.

In addition, Edgenet wanted to improve the overall scalability and performance of its infrastructure. The company’s data pools grow an average of 30 percent each year, and Edgenet needed to deliver high availability and consistently fast response

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Fast Facts

Total product data on SQL Server 2008 R2 6 terabytesProduct items in Edgenet databases >600,000Product attributes in Edgenet databases 21 millionCombined publishers and subscribers to Edgenet data pool

>2,500

Total number of end users 15,000Concurrent users 8,000Average product data changes per day 150,000Application platform capabilities Development, data management, service-

oriented architecture, and business process management

times regardless of fluctuations in transaction volume.

SolutionEdgenet decided to create a new cloud-based product data management and distribution solution known as Ezeedata. It gives vendors a single tool to manage information about any number of products and disseminate it to an unlimited number of sources, including websites, logistics applications, store systems, call centers, catalogs, and search engines.

Edgenet decided to create its solution with the Microsoft platform and hardware from NEC. Not only had Edgenet used the Microsoft platform to support its mission-critical infrastructure for many years, but it also knew the Microsoft platform could deliver the high availability and fast performance needed for success. The company’s IT team also knew that it could turn to Microsoft for support in creating an innovative offering.

In addition to developing a new application, Edgenet decided to upgrade its databases to Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise. By doing so, the company could facilitate faster performance, increased scalability, simplified data sharing, and self-service data analysis.

For example, with SQL Server 2008 R2, developers can take advantage of Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot for Microsoft SharePoint to publish data directly to the web-based Ezeedata application. This capability, combined with the implementation of Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot for Microsoft Excel, would make it possible for customers to query and manage product information using Microsoft Excel 2010 spreadsheet software.

A team of developers at Edgenet created Ezeedata with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 development system, the Microsoft Visual C# development tool, and the Microsoft .NET Framework 4. The team configured the application to interact with Excel 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 so that users would have a single, web-based point of access to information and data analysis tools. Developers also used the Microsoft Silverlight 4 browser plug-in to facilitate the delivery of text and multimedia content to mobile devices and web browsers.

To certify data, Ezeedata uses capabilities in SQL Server 2008 R2 to enforce rules that help to ensure that product information contains accurate phrasing, product branding, and images or videos. After it applies the rules, the application scores the user-supplied data on a scale of 1 to 100,

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Figure 1: An example of product comparison using Ezeedata.

based on its compliance with the rules. It then indexes and compares the product with other items in the same category.

The team deployed the new application on NEC Express5800/A1080a-D server computers that run Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise and SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise. The solution currently includes 6 terabytes of data and half a terabyte of RAM. In addition, engineers deployed two EMC Celerra NS-480 unified storage systems that can accommodate 18 terabytes of data. To promote high availability, engineers installed the storage systems in two separate locations and configured them in a cluster using RAID 5 and RAID 10—so that all data is mirrored and striped to both devices at each location. Developers also tuned the databases to use up to 160 concurrent processing threads and manage up to 20,000,000 daily transactions.

Edgenet launched Ezeedata in 2010. Almost immediately, the offering attracted new customers, among them Google and Bing.

BenefitsBy using the Microsoft platform to develop its new product data management and distribution application, Edgenet has created an innovative solution that increases accuracy, facilitates agility, accelerates performance, and reduces costs and complexity. It also boosts efficiency, and improves data insight and customer satisfaction.

Facilitates Innovation and Accuracy With Ezeedata, Edgenet offers companies one solution to manage and distribute product information. Because it takes advantage of features in SQL Server 2008 R2, Ezeedata can offer innovative capabilities like data certification, which automates the processes required to verify the accuracy of data. As a result, companies like Google have already subscribed to it.

Another advantage to developing Ezeedata on the Microsoft platform is that developers were able to automate and expand the solution’s indexing capabilities. This means that customers can spend less time managing product attributes, and yet reach more customers. For example, when a supplier enters information about a product, it usually includes about 7 attributes. However, after Ezeedata certifies the product information, most items have about 115 attributes.

Ezeedata also applies a date stamp to all new and updated information so that users can instantly know how fresh it is. In addition, developers used the change-tracking feature in SQL Server 2008 R2 to track and store every change made to databases. This gives Edgenet and its customers the ability to identify any causes

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Figure 1: Supplier data is pooled for a spectrum of users and delivered to numerous endpoints.

Figure 2: The NEC Express5800/A1080a-D server computer that supports the Edgenet Ezeedata solution.

Because it takes advantage of features in SQL Server 2008 R2, Ezeedata can offer innovative capabilities like data certification .... As a result, companies like Google have already subscribed to it.

of inaccurate information—and remedy them.

Increases Agility, Speeds Performance, and Minimizes CostsBy upgrading its infrastructure to SQL Server 2008 R2, Edgenet improved its control over hardware resources. For example, SQL Server 2008 R2 supports Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) architectures—used in systems such as the NEC Express5800/A1080a-D—so that it can take advantage of multi-threaded processing. In addition, database administrators can manage how each instance of SQL Server 2008 R2 uses hardware resources including memory, server cores, and processors. Because IT personnel can control how SQL Server 2008 R2 uses specific resources, Edgenet has improved its agility, reduced system response times, and sped the overall performance of its databases. The company can also reduce costs by extending the life of its hardware.

Edgenet can also use built-in management tools in SQL Server 2008 R2 to automatically monitor its databases so that IT personnel can modify software and hardware settings as needed to meet changes in demand. This ability helps Edgenet deliver consistently fast performance and maintain high levels of availability, regardless of changes in transaction volume.

Boosts Simplicity and EfficiencyCompanies that supply data to Edgenet now enjoy a streamlined process for entering and managing product data so that it is consistent and accurate. In addition, Ezeedata simplifies the process of

publishing data to multiple sites by automating data conversion and formatting processes. Users simply indicate what data needs to go to which location—such as a website or newspaper—and Ezeedata manages the processes required to make it happen. The solution also automatically updates all information whenever a change is made.

With its new solution, Edgenet has simplified product data management in another way by assigning a unique Internet Product Code to each product. As a result, the company eliminates any confusion customers may experience when multiple products share the same UPC code.

Improves Data Insight and Customer SatisfactionToday, Edgenet customers can access real-time information about products and, in seconds, collect useful business intelligence with familiar tools such as Excel 2010. In addition, companies can immediately see what information people find about products at various endpoints on the Internet. And with the data certification capabilities in Ezeedata, customers can rely on the quality of that information.

By giving its customers a single solution to manage product information, marketing, and placement, Edgenet helps suppliers, retailers, distributors, and consumers to reach more potential customers. Edgenet also has the flexible infrastructure its needs to help customers gain valuable insight, deliver the products people seek, and improve service levels.

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Edgenet customers can access real-time information about products and, in seconds, collect useful business intelligence with familiar tools such as Excel 2010…. And with the data certification capabilities in Ezeedata, customers can rely on the quality of that information.

Microsoft Server Product PortfolioFor more information about the Microsoft server product portfolio, go to:www.microsoft.com/servers

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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.com

For more information about NEC Corporation products and services, call (866) 632-3226 or visit the website at: www.nec.com

For more information about Edgenet products and services, call (877) 334-3638 or visit the website at: www.edgenet.com

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published August 2011

Software and Services Microsoft Server Product Portfolio− Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise− Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010− Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2

Enterprise Microsoft Office− Microsoft Excel 2010

Microsoft Visual Studio− Microsoft Visual Studio 2010− Microsoft Visual C#

Technologies− Microsoft .NET Framework 4

− Microsoft Silverlight 4− Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot for

Microsoft Excel− Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot for

Microsoft SharePoint

Hardware NEC Express5800/A1080a-D server

computers EMC Celerra NS-480 unified storage

systems