“The feedback on our solution has been off the charts. Windows Azure is helping us broach a huge and relatively untapped market space with a solution that digitizes age-old work traditions in a huge industry.”

Tom Rossiter, Chief Technology Officer, RESAAS

RESAAS is a small but successful startup that provides a social networking service for real estate professionals and their customers. With its traditional hosting provider, the company knew it would face slower response times overseas and increasing cost challenges, so the firm decided to port its offering to the Windows Azure cloud platform. This move has positioned RESAAS to pursue potentially limitless opportunities, as it can easily scale up to meet demand in North America and abroad.

Partner: RESAASWeb Site: www.resaas.com

Partner Size: 20 employeesCountry or Region: CanadaIndustry: Professional services—Independent software vendor

Partner ProfileRESAAS Services is a Microsoft Gold Independent Software Vendor that provides an enterprise-level social networking tool for real estate professionals and their customers.

Software and Services Windows Azure − Windows Azure Compute Services− Windows Azure Content Delivery

Network (CDN)− Windows Azure Storage Services− Windows Azure Traffic Manager− Windows Azure Web Roles − Windows Azure Worker Roles

Windows Phone

For more information about Microsoft Cloud Services, go to:www.microsoft.com/cloud

Enrollment for Core InfrastructureCustomer Solution Case Study

Growing ISV Taps Real Estate Market Opportunity with Cloud-Based Social Network

Business Needs RESAAS Services is a growing company that has established itself in the real estate industry with a simple idea: streamline and digitize communications between profes-sionals and customers through social net-working. The company’s service is designed to allow real estate agents, architects, mort-gage specialists, and other real estate industry professionals to connect in real time from their laptops and mobile devices. It also provides a forum for potential customers to chat directly with real estate agents and other specialists to ask their real estate–related questions.

The service has been a success for RESAAS in its home market of British Columbia, Canada, so the startup firm began looking to expand beyond the region. However, it continually ran into issues with its hosting service Rackspace, which was located at a traditional data center. RESAAS quickly realized that, as it grew, its costs would increase exponentially and response times would become problematic.

“We faced questions that are common to startup companies,” says Tom Rossiter, Chief Technology Officer at RESAAS. “How many people did we think we could attract to the service, and how could we plan for that growth using our current IT infrastructure? Predicting actual numbers and traffic is hard. At the same time, it’s expensive and time consuming to plan for and configure the IT resources that would be needed to handle a sudden expansion in our customer base.”

SolutionRESAAS decided to switch to cloud computing, choosing Windows Azure as its cloud platform. By hosting its solution in Microsoft data centers, which are located globally, RESAAS can take its service far beyond British Columbia, while making the service quick and easy to use on a range of hardware devices and web browsers. The company currently is in talks with major real estate companies throughout North America and has plans to expand to Europe.

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

Document published March 2012

RESAAS initially investigated the Amazon cloud offering, but it fell short of the com-pany’s requirements. “We wanted the ability to specify our hardware configuration, but we couldn’t do that with Amazon, and we were wary about running our application on low-performance machines. With Windows Azure, we could select the hardware that will provide the optimal performance for our solution. Plus, we like the fact that Windows Azure is built around the .NET Framework but also supports a range of other programming options.”The solution went live on Windows Azure in November 2011 and is offered in two versions. A professional version for real estate professionals lets people exchange inform-ation such as new listings, rates, and contrac-tual details in real time. Instead of waiting to phone, email, or fax during breaks or after business hours, users can deliver information immediately to (and from) laptops and smart-phones, such as Windows Phone, iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry devices. The service works in the most popular web browsers and is integrated with social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

The consumer version of the solution includes the RESAAS Questions service, which lets customers ask questions related to real estate, whether they want to know about specific properties or neighborhoods, or about financing. The service determines the general location of properties in customers’ questions and lets agents and other professionals in those areas be the first to see and have a chance to respond. “This is particularly valuable for agents, because there’s a much higher probability of connecting with high-value prospects,” says Rossiter.

BenefitsBy selecting Windows Azure, RESAAS has benefitted enormously. Windows Azure supports a wide and open range of tools for building the solution. The platform offers scalability and flexibility to accommodate growth, and provides a choice of global locations, which means faster service to international customers. “The feedback on our solution has been off the charts,” says Rossiter. “Windows Azure is helping us broach a huge and relatively untapped market space with a solution that digitizes age-old work traditions in a huge industry.”Range of Tools to Fit Solution

While much of the RESAAS solution is built on the Microsoft .NET platform, Rossiter says his team appreciated the fact that they could use a variety of development tools, including the HTML5, AJAX, and jQuery programming languages; PhoneGap for modifying the solution for a range of smartphones; and the Jenkins CI tool for automated testing and one-click deployment of updates. “A great benefit of the Windows Azure platform is the support for a range of tools,” says Rossiter. “We’re not bound by using Microsoft tools exclusively or doing everything through the Windows Azure portal.”

Scalability to Accommodate GrowthThe RESAAS business plan relies on the company’s ability to accommodate rapid growth. “The fact that we can quickly adjust how much infrastructure we use in Windows Azure is huge for us as a startup company,” says Rossiter. “It takes mere minutes—not days or weeks—to scale up quickly to match new demand. We also appreciate that with Windows Azure, there is no minimum term or billing. That’s also a big deal for a small company trying to grow while keeping its budget in line.”

Global Locations to Expand BusinessThe hosting of Windows Azure at different global locations helps the firm’s long-term growth strategy. “We have plans to offer the service outside of North America,” Rossiter says. “Microsoft makes it easy to host the service in a variety of geographical locations. That helps improve performance for customers in other countries by minimizing the latency that can happen over long distances. Faster performance means happier customers, which can only help our growth.”

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

Document published March 2012