Kiwi Companies in the Cloud

Whether we like it or not we now live in a mobile first, cloud first world. While this creates plenty of opportunities it also challenges and disrupts a number of traditional business models. Data is the new oil and the companies that will thrive in the new world will be adopting lean methodologies, leveraging services and drawing insight from data. Microsoft strives to be the platform and productivity company for this new world and the trend is away from infrastructure services to platform services. As with most technology innovation waves it is developers and software companies that lead the way. This book illustrates the amazing work that a number of New Zealand software businesses are doing on the Microsoft Azure platform, going global and pioneering new business models.

Nigel Parker

Director Developer Experience Microsoft New Zealand

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Microsoft Azure is an open and flexible cloud platform that offers a choice of languages, tools and frameworks to allow organisations to build, deploy and manage applications and services. Our global network of Microsoft managed data centres allows organisations the ability to scale globally but at a fraction of the traditional cost. Microsoft Azure accepts more than a billion authentications every week, hosts over 30 trillion objects in storage, and has thousands of new customers signing up every day. The case studies in this booklet show some of the remarkable ways Microsoft Azure is being used to set up New Zealand organisations for the future, turning great ideas into reality without large upfront investments.

Dirk Develter

Cloud and Enterprise Business Group Lead Microsoft New Zealand

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Index

SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE (SAAS) Serko 8MirrorWave Limited 9Pasiv 10Putti Apps 1111 Ants Analytics 12Wipster 13Contrast Media 14Vmob 15Agile / Virsae 17Booktrack 18Timely 20Torque IT Solutions 21Vista/Veezi 22Abtrac 23Merlot Aero 25TidyWork 27Magnetism 28Little Lot 30Blackbay 31PageProof 32Signal 33EVA 34Future Insight 35TranscribeMe 36Crossware 38Mobit 39

INFRASTRUCTURE AS A SERVICE (IAAS) Business Mechanix 42Atmospheric 43Kordia 44Zespri 45

PLATFORM AS A SERVICE (PAAS) Dimension Data 48Theta 50-51

CONSUMER WEB/MOBILE 7 digital 54Provoke - All Blacks site and Partner’s Life 56-57iTicket 58 POCKETvouchers 59NV Interactive 61Storbie 6225 Most Played 63NextMinute 64

Software as a Service Software as a Service (SaaS) has the potential to transform the way IT departments relate to and even think about their role as providers of computing services to the rest of the enterprise.

Alongside developing the best SaaS solutions such as Office365 and SharePoint Online, Microsoft is hugely invested in helping Partners and ISVs to build their SaaS solutions with the help of the highly scalable cloud platform Azure that is known for its enterprise grade security and cross-platform support, while still providing pathways for developers to build on top of our own first party SaaS solutions.

Serko previously used Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 as its database layer and Microsoft Azure Standard Storage. However, Serko’s SaaS solution entails an enormous number of input/output operations per second (IOPS) and recognised a moderate slowdown in the database tier. To accommodate planned business growth and provide the best possible experience for its customers, Serko upgraded to Microsoft Azure Premium Storage. As a result, Serko now uses the same number of SQL Server database servers to support three times the transaction volume, with no performance degradation - positioning Serko well for its future infrastructure growth.

serko.com

Serko is the leader in online travel booking and expense management for businesses in the Asia-Pacific region, processing more than 30% of Australia’s corporate travel spend annually.

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The sporadic nature of MirrorWave’s unique approach to feedback management means that one day they’re generating hundreds of thousands of transactions and the next day it can be quiet.

MirrorWave needed a solution that was able to power up to the necessary speed without breaking the bank while the system was idle. Microsoft Azure’s out-of-the-box load balancing ensures they have enough web instances to deliver a responsive site, no matter when.

With stringent security requirements a dedicated server with SQL Server Enterprise, tightly coupled on the same network as their web application was necessary. Microsoft Azure’s Virtual Machines and Networks allowed them to install whatever software they needed and dictate how various systems communicated within their own private network. Microsoft Azure took away the stress of network management, letting them focus on developing a great application for their clients.

mirrorwave.com

Pasiv enables Employers and Recruiters to find and communicate with talent, instantly.

300 million profiles can be searched in real time. As customers refine their search, our technology harvests live data from social sites, professional groups and the wider web to provide a full picture of prospective candidates.

160 virtual machines, scaled automatically, run a dozen applications employing Azure Queues, Storage, Cloud Services and virtual networking, to download and parse 20,000 pages/min. Structured data is then persisted to SQL Enterprise with disk I/O of up to 500MB/s. In parallel, data is transformed and uploaded to Azure Search.

A streamlined user experience is ensured as SignalR pushes data to the customer’s browser as it becomes available.

Big data, in real time, with client-push connectivity, made possible with Azure.

pasiv.com

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Putti Forms allows end customers to create their own applications for a wide range of use cases to help speed up business process and connect them to their back end systems.

As a fast growing startup with a lot of experience in cloud services, Putti is always looking at how technology can let them focus on adding value to their applications and avoid managing lower layer processes. Putti utilises a host of Microsoft Azure services including DocumentDB, SQL, Logic Apps and VMs, all of which are monitored through Application Insights. With Microsoft Azure, Putti is able to build, deploy and manage applications with ease and unmatched productivity.

puttiapps.com

RAP is cloud-based which means connecting RAP to data is all that’s required before you are ready to go. Most of 11Ants’ customers are up and running within fourteen days, just a simple monthly subscription fee. The platform routinely deals with billions of elements of data and applies complex models to the data - all performed within seconds. Security is of paramount concern to 11Ants and to secure access to your data 11Ants leverages Microsoft’s enterprise grade, certified security services.

11antsanalytics.com

11Ants Analytics flagship product, 11Ants RAP, is a retail analytics platform which transforms raw retail transactional data into actionable customer stories to help maximise customer engagement and operational value.

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Wipster provides intuitive video review and approval to producers, creative teams and marketing departments.

Used in over 190 countries, Wipster relies on Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines for video processing, SQL Server for large comment databases and Azure CDN’s for quick content acquisition and delivery. The entire application stack is designed from the ground up to leverage the best of Microsoft Azure, from Visual Studio Online continuous integration to Cloud Services automatic scalability control. As a rapidly growing company, Wipster is currently in the process of expanding its platform to enterprise customers by offering a complete developer SDK and native identity federation – all powered by Azure API Management and Azure Identity & Access Management.

wipster.io

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Using their Hardlink Platform, they empower clients to engage with their customers in meaningful, interactive ways initiated from any print or film media channel via mobile devices. Contrast Media is focused on delivering innovative solutions that accelerate their clients into the mCommerce and mobile engagement space through the Hardlink platform. Being an Agile company, they needed a platform that would support a rich set of development and platform services, coupled with the ability to scale massively on demand. Because of this, they chose Microsoft Azure.

hardlink.co.nz

Contrast Media is at the forefront of helping companies connect the real world to the virtual through their innovative solutions.

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To optimize consumer engagement through to sale, the VMob platform monitors billions of data points from mobile phones and other connected systems; collecting over 8,000 data points per second at peak loads and storing over 250GB of data per day.

The challenge VMob faced was collecting, storing and analysing this data (real-time and retrospectively) for the most current view of consumer behaviour. By using Microsoft Azure compute and storage services and stream analytics, VMob is able to continuously monitor behaviour from millions of consumers; even with massive spikes in activity. Azure Mobile Engagement delivers notifications and handles segmentation at large scale. Microsoft Power BI and Azure Machine learning are used to provide advanced analytics and predictive targeting.

The scalability and power of the Microsoft Azure environment allows VMob to deliver highly personalized experiences for customers on an individual basis for some of the world’s largest retailers and brands including McDonald’s, 7-Eleven, Esso and Anheuser Busch.

vmob.co

VMob is an intelligent personalization platform that integrates mobile apps, in-store systems, external services and POS data - delivering more effective promotions, higher customer engagement and increased campaign revenue to customer-facing brands.

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Virsae provides cloud-based service management software for unified communications.

They make it easy for organisations to monitor and manage their business critical communications systems.

As a New Zealand based business reaching out to the world, Virsae needed a platform with scalability, reliability and reach. Microsoft Azure was the answer. Virsae uses a range of Microsoft Azure services including Cloud Services, VMs, SQL, Storage and Websites. Virsae’s service management software and the underlying Microsoft Azure Platform processes in excess of two billion transactions per month, and growing.

virsae.com

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Music, ambient audio and sound effects are automatically paced to an individual’s reading speed and synchronised to match the story while they read, increasing comprehension & enjoyment. Booktrack manages tens of thousands of eBooks and a much greater number of audio tracks.

The Microsoft Azure platform enables Booktrack to concurrently deliver to a global user base on demand, on any device, and with split second timing requirements. Microsoft Azure has allowed Booktrack to deliver to these requirements through the seamless integration of storage and web services layers with smart caching and geo-replication. The inbuilt monitoring and auto-scale of Micosoft Azure also allows Booktrack to easily configure bounds for the automatic management of fluctuating demands on Booktrack’s servers and services.

booktrack.com

Booktrack has created the technology to synchronise movie-style soundtracks to eBooks.

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It handles everything from multiple branches and multiple staff right through to SMS reminders, reporting and an online booking plug-in.

Microsoft Azure allowed Timely to efficiently scale their platform as they’ve grown from servicing one customer to thousands of customers around the globe. They’re now using a full Microsoft Azure stack of services including cloud services, geo-replicated databases, service bus, Azure Search, storage, CDN, Redis, mobile notifications and Visual Studio Online integration. Timely now consider choosing Microsoft Azure early on as one of the best business decisions they’ve made.

gettimely.com

Timely is a cloud-based appointment system for clinics, salons, practices and any business operator that takes appointments.

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Being a start-up ISV with a mix of SaaS and on-premises solutions and an enterprise customer focus, the company needed a platform that allows quick innovation and global growth, but also gives stability and reliability. The Microsoft Azure platform gives Torque ITS this flexibility. The various company products utilize a host of Azure services including Cloud Services, VMs, SQL Azure, CDN, Storage, Service Bus, Virtual Networks, Websites, Cache, Logic Apps and Backup, thus enabling continuous delivery through ease in provisioning new instances and automated deployment of the applications.

torque-its.com

Torque IT Solutions provides software products, consulting and training to the automotive finance industry.

Torque IT Solutions

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Vista needed a cost-effective solution that let cinema staff concentrate on running a successful business instead of worrying about day-to-day server and software administration.

Using Azure SQL Databases and Azure Web Roles, Veezi delivers a cutting-edge SaaS solution, allowing cinema management from anywhere, 24/7.

Microsoft Azure gives Veezi the flexibility to deploy its Point of Sale software to customers around the world. With smart caching and processing built into its core, the Point of Sale sells tickets even if the internet goes down. Whether screening the biggest blockbuster or most creative independent film, Veezi’s scalability supports cinema success and provides the foundation of a great movie going experience.

veezi.com

Beautifully simple ticketing for independent cinemas.

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Abtrac is a multi-tenancy SQL Azure database with an Azure website

Abtrac’s cloud solution is a huge improvement on its package formerly individually maintained across hundreds of LAN based clients.

Updates are simply delivered. Being cloud based, anyone at any time can start a Abtrac free trial and convert to a subscription client. Their marketing reach is thus significantly enhanced and development to rollout times are slashed.

Abtrac links with all popular SME accounting packages through their APIs. Being a niche product it integrates with specific desktop packages through their API and plug-ins.

Other innovations include user controllable grid depths and columns. And invoicing and accounts rendered users can fully manage their own layouts to suit their professional image.

abtrac.com

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Merlot.aero is a complete organisational management solution that optimises the utilisation of aircraft and crew for airlines.

Merlot harnesses the flexibility of the Microsoft Azure platform to scale up and down to meet the safety, efficiency and quality demands of innovative airlines resource planning. The Merlot application suite takes planning and operations information out of the operations center and crew room and delivers it into the hands of the crew wherever they are. The flexible platform allows airline employees to access crew and aircraft scheduling via web and mobile apps anywhere. Deployed in Microsoft Azure data centers across the globe, Merlot distills big data and massive computing power onto the crews’ favourite device.

merlot.aero

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merlot.aero

TidyWork is a job management system that enables easy job costing and efficient management of time, materials and expenses.

Microsoft Azure provides the cloud platform for access from any device, anywhere and anytime. Microsoft Azure was chosen out of the need to be able to quickly scale to the needs of businesses of any size.

With minimal overhead, TidyWork customers are guaranteed the benefit of high availability and the security of their data. Integrating with other applications including Microsoft Project, Microsoft Outlook, TidyStock and Xero, users can bring TidyWork into applications they are already familiar with. Microsoft Project and Outlook offer a gannt view of TidyWork projects and a calendar view of time entries. TidyWork seamlessly integrates with Xero offering a powerful business workflow solution for SMEs with just a few users right up to hundreds.

tidywork.com

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The use of Azure Queues and Worker Roles enables synchronisation of customer and business information housed in Xero and Dynamics CRM, each client receiving their data quickly with no performance issues.

The Azure Cloud Service, provides the ability for our clients to self-manage their synchronisation settings, 365 days a year with 99.9% uptime. Microsoft Azure ensures MyConnect is flexible, scalable and can be rapidly deployed around the globe.

magnetismsolutions.co.nz

Microsoft Gold Partner Magnetism created the MyConnect for Xero application on Microsoft Azure due to the scalability and reliability of the platform. The My Connect for Xero application can service hundreds of customers, using Microsoft Azure automatic scaling, for less than a coffee a day.

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By rolling out the enterprise software, every computer in an office can generate a daily donation for charity without any cost to the organisation.

Each morning Little Lot will update the desktop background on every screen with an attractive new HD wallpaper. Brands are charged to feature on these wallpapers and then 75% of that fee is donated to the businesses charity of choice.

Hosting Little Lot on Microsoft Azure ensures best practice for data storage and security with a pay-as-you-go price – essentially allowing a lean startup to operate the same technology and resources as a company with infinitely more resources and budget. That’s the beauty of the cloud!

littlelot.com

Little Lot is a free technology solution for Corporate Social Responsibility.

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Blackbay is the leading provider of mobility enabled solutions for the Transport and Logistics Industry.Configurable end-to-end products ensure first time, on time, every time delivery by connecting the shipper, operations, management, the driver and crucially the customer with real-time data and automated workflows to create smarter Delivery Companies.

To deliver this innovation the technical team leverage the latest Microsoft Azure features such as Azure Service Bus, SQL Azure, VMs, Azure Data & Storage and Azure Identity Services. These features enhance the Blackbay product offering, provide the platform for new features, reduce implementation time and deliver efficiencies for Blackbay. Continuing to leverage further Microsoft Azure offerings to realise the Blackbay technology vision is a key focus for the future.

blackbay.com

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PageProof is for anyone seeking feedback on their document, artwork, contract, strategic plan, presentation – any work that’s in progress and needing review or approval from others. And, without effort, PageProof encrypts your file and all the feedback.

PageProof was designed to sit on top of Microsoft Azure’s AutoScale architecture, which allows it to dynamically scale up when loads increase and scale down afterward. It’s sign-off made simple.

pageproof.com

The world’s first fully encrypted cloud proofing & approval system.

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Signal is an enterprise Software as a Service offering that allows agencies to quickly listen to and monitor what is happening across various social media feeds.

A true cloud based solution, Signal utilises the scalability, performance and elasticity of the Microsoft Azure cloud platform allowing it to process significant volumes of social media that can be generated during an emergency or incident – with Microsoft Azure they can cope with normal operation as well as manage peaks as required.

Leveraging key Microsoft Azure services such as Service Bus, Streaming Analytics, Event Hubs and Web Jobs enables Signal to be an easy to use, scalable, secure and robust solution.

Future enhancements include the inclusion of detailed analytics, natural language processing and Azure machine learning to deliver even greater insight from social media feeds.

getsignal.info

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New Zealand organisations are adopting these systems for both the visitor experience and health and safety compliance benefits. The Designertech team behind EVA have experienced many favourable testimonials from customers. This solution is especially favourable in New Zealand due to the eight foreign language options including: Chinese, Thai, Indonesian and Te Reo Māori.

Designertech is developing a cloud version of their flagship multi language product EVA on Microsoft Azure using the power of the scale up, scale down functionality and powerful tool set options, such as Azure SQL within the platform. They anticipate their customers will benefit from the advantage of enterprise class security, high availability with multi country diversity and scale up and scale down functionality that would not have been possible without leveraging the power of the Microsoft Azure platform.

designertech.co.nz

EVA is a visitor management system designed to ensure visitors are aware of the health and safety procedures of a site and have a welcoming, professional and efficient reception sign in experience.

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SimQly is a cloud-based data exploration tool developed by Future Insight. Data mining is automated for the user and made simple so that users can find patterns and trends in data without needing to know what to look for.

As an early stage start-up, they needed a platform that is open and flexible for building and testing their product. They tried competitors, but switched to Microsoft Azure because it allows easy creation of scalable APIs using R or Python scripts. While their focus is on data mining, Azure ML also comes with a wide range of other pre-packaged data science APIs that they like to use, such as sentiment analysis and key phrase extraction.

SimQly is live and open for public testing. Supported by Microsoft Azure and the BizSpark programme for startups, Future Insight are confident they will become a leader in the self-service data analytics space.

simqly.com

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Microsoft Azure is the cornerstone around which the mobile apps, customer and transcriber’s Portals and speech processing have come together to make the technology. Customers use an app on their phone to record meetings, podcasts, interviews or a dictation. The transcription of the audio to text allows them to share, search and monetize the content. Transcribers use the Transcriber’s Portal: a cloud transcription platform to make transcription work simple, fast and profitable. Combining Microsoft Azure with TranscribeMe’s innovative Speech Processing technology, customers have a one-click solution to convert recordings into word-for-word, perfect text.

transcribeme.com

TranscribeMe is the simplest, fastest and most accurate way of converting speech to text using technology and crowd-sourced transcribers.

TranscribeMe

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It’s the first of its kind to be completely integrated with Office 365 and Microsoft Azure. A users’ email never leaves the security of the Microsoft cloud. Being integrated within Microsoft Azure means that a user’s information is pulled directly from Azure Active Directory, ensuring that all information is always correct. The features of Microsoft Azure allow dynamic and secure scaling, to maintain the leading solution for a rapidly growing user base from over 60 countries. Crossware Mail Signature uses web roles to present the front end, worker roles for the processing of emails, and SQL Azure for customer configurations.

crossware.co.nz

Crossware Mail Signature is an email signature solution that manages a company’s branding, advertising and legal requirements on every email from any device.

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MOBIT utilizes behavioural tracking and automation, leveraging a range of communication channels including social media, SMS and email. The processing power to deliver these communications in real time required a system that was reliable and could scale seamlessly based on global demand. The utilization of Azure Cloud Instances, SQL Databases and cloud storage combined with geolocation provided the perfect infrastructure for MOBIT to deliver an enterprise level SaaS solution. In a fast moving technology sector, it was critical that MOBIT could continue to evolve without any service downtime. In their own words, Microsoft Azure delivers this for them.

mobit.com

MOBIT enables marketers to deliver rich and personalized content directly to the smartphones of their audience where 95% of information is opened within 3 minutes of delivery.

Infrastructure as a Service Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is a service model that delivers hardware, storage, servers and datacenter space or network components without having to physically purchase or maintain any of it.

Azure’s IaaS offering, part of the Gartner’s Leaders MQ, provides highly scalable and robust environments to run Virtual Machines, High Power Compute Batch operations, secure Virtual Networks and VPN Gateways with a strong support for complex Hybrid scenarios.

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It’s not just the numbers that are big: their specialty is large, complex cloud deployments including Microsoft Azure, Office365, Identity Management and ADFS (Single Sign-on). With more than 10 years in the education and corporate sector Business Mechanix have worked with over 86% of New Zealand Universities and Polytechnics.

Customers of Business Mechanix know the experience they bring counts when they need a hybrid-cloud solution. One of the most popular setups deployed to date for their customers is the use of Azure for real-time AD replication and shared cloud/ hybrid authentication. Microsoft Azure was set up as an extension to the customer’s network so that their customers or users could then login with their AD on premise OR on Microsoft Azure doing the authentication. It’s an active-active cloud –hybrid setup. Business Mechanix also setup for their customers Identity Management Cloud Hybrid solutions. In this case, users might be setup in the customer’s student management or learning management system on premise, then they are automatically added to Active Directory onsite and synced up to the Identity solution running on Microsoft Azure and then from there to Office365: enabling them to have common users accounts across all systems, all on one seamless transaction.

businessmechanix.co.nz

Business Mechanix have deployed over one million users since 2008 into Microsoft’s cloud, making them the largest deployer in NZ.

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Microsoft NZ Cloud SMB Partner of the Year 2015, Atmospheric are delivering enterprise class technology to New Zealand SMB & Mid-market clients, utilising the power of Microsoft Azure to replace traditional on premise servers with a complete Cloud solution.

Atmospheric solutions leverage a deep understanding of both business drivers and technology enablers; integrating Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and the productivity suite of Office 365 (SaaS) within a fully managed Microsoft Azure environment to deliver enhanced features and economic advantage to clients of all sizes.

When local company Rush Security identified a full cloud solution as a potential alternative, the high impact and critical nature of the services they offer presented partner Atmospheric with an opportunity to showcase both the value and power of Azure, when migrating an array of disparate legacy systems and applications to a unified and high availability enabled cloud environment.

atmospheric.com

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Kordia uses Microsoft Azure for development, TEST and disaster recovery environments. Because cloud is a key part of Kordia’s IT strategy, it will eventually move more of its production services on to the Azure cloud platform.

Microsoft also successfully worked with Kordia in gaining Kordia’s SAP accreditation, enabling the telco company to deploy additional SAP environments on Microsoft Azure.

Using Microsoft Azure means Kordia can provide its customers with a cost effective, flexible and scalable network with minimal infrastructure requirements, while ensuring fast and consistent performance to cloud applications.

kordia.co.nz

Kordia is a broadcast and telecommunications company. It was the first service provider in Australasia to interconnect with Azure ExpressRoute, using the platform for its own IT requirements as well as selling it to other customers.

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Zespri International is the world’s largest marketer of kiwifruit, selling into more than 53 countries and managing 30 percent of global export volume.

Zespri chose Datacom and Microsoft as long-term partners to consult, transform, build and manage its IT resources in the cloud. Datacom recommended Microsoft Azure as the right public cloud service. This decision was based on cost, experience with platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS) solution, and the existing strategic alignment and expertise within Datacom.

Zespri migrated its SAP development environment into Microsoft Azure using approximately 100 Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines, in just over one month. In a world-first Datacom successfully shifted all Zespri’s SAP production applications to Microsoft Azure and since Zespri has reduced IT costs by US $700,000. SAP performs well on Microsoft Azure, with response times under one second and improving. Going forward Zespri intends to move 100 percent of its IT infrastructure into Microsoft Azure.

zespri.com

Platform as a ServicePlatform as a Service (PaaS) is a paradigm for delivering a platform for the creation of scalable applications and services that are delivered over the Internet. Also part of the Gartner’s Leaders MQ, Azure’s PaaS offerings not just include Web Apps and Cloud Services, but also provides complex workflows with Logic Apps.

Azure’s PaaS has also helped open up a foray of services such as Backend-as-a-Service with Mobile Apps, Search-as-a-Service with Azure Search, Media-as-a-Service with Azure Media Services, Identity-as-a-Service with Azure Active Directory, data and storage-as-a-service with Blobs, SQL, DocumentDB, etc. that both scales up and down, and in and out.

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LanzaTech, a biotechnology firm, required a secure solution that enabled timely access to large volumes of globally dispersed research and operational data.

This data is the life-blood of the company and it needed to be available to all members of the research team while being kept secured from the outside world.

Leveraging Microsoft Azure to augment LanzaTech’s integration and communication services enabled Dimension Data to encrypt all data travelling outside of corporate borders while providing tailored data processing tools to increase the efficiency of the ETL processes required to support analytics.

dimensiondata.com

Otago Regional Council collects important consent and environmental data on behalf of ratepayers. The council worked with Theta to make this data accessible to anyone by creating a ground-breaking Open Data Platform on Azure.

Data can be searched, compared, charted and mapped with the platform’s online reporting and visualisation tools. Data is also available in machine-readable format (OData) - compatible with tools like Excel, and making it easy to build new applications using the data.

Microsoft Azure provides the instant, cost effective, scalable and robust infrastructure to host this platform and 40+ years of data. This project was a finalist in the Microsoft NZ Partner Awards 2013, and runner up in the 2014 ALGIM awards, in the Excellence in Innovation category.

theta.co.nz

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Intouch, a leading provider of POS, ticketing and reservation software for ski areas, resorts and attractions worldwide needed a new, future-proof ecommerce solution to take to their global customers and which could scale to meet the seasonal demands of the sector.

Theta’s Microsoft credentials and Microsoft Azure expertise helped realise that vision. The resulting ecommerce solution is built on Microsoft Azure using the latest Microsoft technologies and frameworks, and integrates with on-premises systems such as point-of-sale.

In parallel, Theta developed a new website for sister company NZSki, who operates three ski fields in NZ’s South Island, also built on Microsoft Azure.

Both businesses experience seasonal peaks. When ticketing opens for the year, around particular promotions, and when the snow starts to fall, the sites get busy. With Microsoft Azure they can scale seamlessly to support increased load.

theta.co.nz

Consumer Web/Mobile

Over the last ten years the internet has grown from a set of static assets viewed in a browser, to a densely interconnected fabric of highly interactive services delivered to web browsers and mobile apps. This is most apparent in the way that consumers buy and sell goods, information and services at a global scale.

Microsoft makes available a rich and extensive set of technologies like Azure App Services to enable mobile and web developers to quickly, easily and cost effectively provision the websites and apps that consumers have come to expect. Scaling these services have never been easier with autoscale, and rich telemetry gathering available straight out of the box.

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7digital’s platform and flexible APIs enable partners to harness the power of music through streaming and download services. Taking care of infrastructure management, licensing and reporting, their platform provides the ability to innovate quickly in digital music and next generation radio services.

Notification Hubs from Microsoft Azure allows 7digital to deliver relevant content such as hand-picked music recommendations, previously only delivered via email, to their mobile app users. Notification Hubs provided the kind of cross-platform solution for 7digital to increase engagement and overall sales. The easy integration, flexible segmentation as well as pricing structure made Microsoft Azure a straightforward choice for 7digital, who plan to expand Notification Hubs to sync content across devices and expand into personalised notifications.

nz.7digital.com

7digital provides one of the world’s leading digital music and radio platforms with one of the broadest catalogues across all mobile operating systems and devices.

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As part of a long standing engagement with New Zealand Rugby, Provoke migrated the existing CMS that ran allblacks.com to Microsoft Azure. In addition to this, Provoke deployed Azure Web Apps for each of the front-end websites, migrated SQL server databases to Azure SQL Database enabling scaling and cost effectiveness and also leveraged Azure Redis Cache to make the site run at optimal speeds.

This was to primarily tackle two key challenges. Game time would see huge spikes in demand (peaks of 15 million page views from a monthly average of 2 million) that needed to be catered to. Having instant Microsoft Azure power and capacity to cover peak demand periods, while minimising costs in low demand periods, provided the optimal solution. The demand for the site is elastic. Microsoft Azure ensures the supply of web capacity is just as elastic.

The second challenge was to deliver a consistent fan experience. All Blacks fans are worldwide and using Microsoft Azure means the experience for fans is the same, no matter where they are located. Microsoft Azure offers New Zealand Rugby the optimal blend of scalability and flexibility in a cloud hosting platform, while giving Provoke the freedom and control offered by Microsoft’s software, systems and tools.

provokesolutions.com

Provoke Solutions is a full-service software design and development company specialising in the delivery of enterprise-grade solutions using Microsoft technology.

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Partners Life is New Zealand’s fastest growing life insurance company. With a strategic objective of leveraging cloud IT wherever possible, Provoke were set the task of automating and digitising the paper-based policy processes that Partners Life had quickly outgrown.

Using a combination of on-premises and cloud infrastructure, Provoke developed for Partners Life a complete mail management solution. Mail is scanned into Microsoft Azure blob storage, then picked up for processing in a Microsoft Azure hosted worker and finally routed to SharePoint Online for rapid access by customer service staff. Microsoft Azure allows the processes to be scaled if the queue exceeds monitored levels to optimise processing time for having scanned files into SharePoint. A monitoring solution is wrapped around the upload process that is integrated with Provoke customer support systems to alert when files fail to upload or queue size increase enabling quick turnaround of fixes.

provokesolutions.com

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Event ticketing is an industry that needs to scale quickly and effortlessly based on periods of steady traffic interspersed with massive spikes in demand. iTICKET’s platform uses a combination of SQL Azure databases, Cloud Instances, CDNs and Azure caching to make its software as responsive as possible, even during periods of extremely high load. Microsoft Azure also gives iTICKET the ability to geo-replicate its platform with automatic failover to provide a rock solid service.

iticket.co.nz

iTICKET is a web, venue and mobile based ticketing platform, which uses a wide range of products in the Microsoft Azure stack to optimise the user experience when purchasing tickets to events.

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POCKETvouchers is a marketing platform that manages the real-time allocation and then redemption of uniquely coded vouchers.

As a consumer engages with the platform (via keyword and/or via a 3rd party site using the POCKETvouchers API) a voucher is pushed to their mobile phone in real-time. The vouchers are then presented in store by the consumer and redeemed, verified, reported and cancelled in real-time via a direct integration with the retailers Point of Sale system. This drives effective marketing through product trial and foot-traffic and ‘closes the loop’ between brand engagement and product sales.

The platform is hosted in Microsoft Azure which provides cost efficient hosting, scalability, reliability and ease of deployment for POCKETvouchers worldwide.

pocketvouchers.com

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NV Interactive have been NZC’s digital partner since 2006 and at the core of their engagement is the blackcaps.co.nz website. Whilst performing well at the time, with the eyes of the world turning to New Zealand for the ICC Cricket World Cup there was a need to step up.

NV Interactive embarked on a comprehensive digital refresh program. The blackcaps.co.nz website was completely reimagined as a modern, responsive web experience. A suite of cross-platform mobile apps for iOS, Android and Windows was also developed. The entire solution was designed around Microsoft Azure.

Through a combination of IaaS and PaaS, the seven dedicated servers were replaced and the elasticity & scalability needed to support the third largest sporting event in the world was gained. NV Interactive incorporated Notifications Hubs with WebAPI delivering notifications and live data to app install base.

Ultimately Microsoft Azure allowed them to deliver a highly scalable, flexible & robust app platform delivering to both web and app whilst supporting deep integration with both external partners and on-premises systems. But perhaps most importantly the fans didn’t notice a thing as it all worked seamlessly. NV Interactive are also the Winner’s of the Microsoft New Zealand Partner of the Year – Cloud Platform.

nvinteractive.com

Since launch, the New Zealand Cricket (NZC) website has generated an incredible 56 million page views, driven by over 22 million user sessions.

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Storbie is a user-friendly, fully-featured online shop builder that anyone can use to create, run and grow their own ecommerce site or marketplace.

Storbie connects members to a continually expanding network of online shops, marketplaces and customers.

Ecommerce is an ever-changing world and Storbie is committed to keeping its customers at the cutting edge by delivering a platform that is being constantly improved. Storbie requires a hosting platform that can support continuous deployment with zero downtime. With Storbie experiencing significant growth, the platform also needs to scale easily to meet that demand. To achieve this, Storbie’s architecture is a resilient fault-tolerant combination of SQL Azure databases, Azure Storage, Web Apps, VMs and Service Bus Queues which can be scaled individually as required.

storbie.com

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25 Most Played is a new music data company that, as they say, is only as good as their back end. And in their words, with infrastructure provided by Microsoft Azure ‘they are pretty bloody good’.

Using the Azure SQL Database 25 Most Played have been able to create relational tables storing their 44 million song library in ways that thier users all over the world can easily query using the mobile, desktop, and tablet apps.

The flexibility to integrate different kinds of datasets from Facebook, Apple’s Enterprise Partner Feed, and various other sources in a way which self-indexes has seen 25 Most Played’s service paradoxically grow faster as their data requirements have increased exponentially.

The VMs, Web Apps, Cloud Services, SQL Databases, Storage, and Directories have all been vital components in helping them scale in 6 weeks to have users in 35 countries

– with zero downtime.

25mostplayed.com

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As a SaaS ISV they’ve enabled straightforward set up, implementation and ongoing enhancement for SME customers. Customers receive improved operational efficiency, reduced administration and IT costs, and the ability to better control a field service team in real-time. They’ve found choosing Microsoft Azure as their host platform an obvious choice, and in their own words, they’re pleased to be a part of it.

NextMinute utilize a host of Azure services including Cloud Services for application hosting and monitoring, SQL database for the relational persistence layer, Blob Storage for files and media, Service Bus for inter-server messaging and Redis Cache for general caching and application performance. They love how quick and easy it is to provision new resources as the scale of their user base grows. NextMinute have reflected that running their ISV SaaS business without Microsoft Azure ‘would have been very costly and time consuming’.

nextminute.com

NextMinute is a simple & powerful online job & service management tool for small or medium business with a mobile workforce. Their product allows work to be planned, scheduled, time-tracked, costed, quoted, monitored and billed on the go.

Are you a promising Kiwi startup? Applications are now open for the BizSpark programme. Receive free software, tools and up to USD $27,000 in free cloud services over the three years of the programme. Approved startups can now receive a whopping USD $120,000 of cloud services on BizSpark Plus.

• Apply now: aka.ms/joinbizspark

Try Microsoft Azure for yourselfMicrosoft Azure is the cloud for modern business and works with the code and tools you know; including Linux, Java and a gallery of open source tools.

• Take the free trial for a spin: aka.ms/tryazure

Like to know a bit more Microsoft Azure? • Join the team behind Microsoft’s products for bite-sized updates

on Azure, every Friday: aka.ms/tgiaf

• Free ‘Azure Fundamentals’ course: aka.ms/learnazurefundamentals

The case studies within this catalogue are provided by Microsoft Partners and customers and are for informational purposes only.

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