Startup Cuts Code by 5 Percent, Minimizes Costs and Resources with Microsoft Solution

OverviewCountry or Region: United StatesIndustry: Media and entertainment—Advertising

Customer ProfileFounded in 2009, SignSwift provides digital signage solutions. The company is based in Washington State.

Business SituationSignSwift needed affordable development tools and information technologies to develop and launch its Web-based business. The solution needed to facilitate productivity, reliability, and scalability.

SolutionSignSwift built its Web site with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate, the Microsoft .NET Framework 4, and other products acquired through the Microsoft BizSpark program.

Benefits Reduces code by 5 percent, cuts

costs, and accelerates development

Boosts customer satisfaction Provides quality and flexibility

“Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate and the .NET Framework 4 reduce the time-to-market for startups with features such as the ADO.NET Entity Framework 4.”

Ian Mercer, Owner and CEO, SignSwift

SignSwift, a startup company that provides digital signage services, needed to build a Web site to support its offerings. To do so, the company sought an affordable yet robust development and Web infrastructure solution that could provide reliability and scalability. SignSwift took advantage of the Microsoft BizSpark program so that it could use Microsoft products without any up-front investments. The company deployed beta versions of Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate and the Microsoft .NET Framework 4 to develop applications. It also uses Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Standard, Internet Information Services 7.5, Microsoft Expression Design 3, and Microsoft Expression Blend 3. With its solution, SignSwift has been able to write less code, reduce errors and costs—and create scalable, high-performance offerings that are easy to use and find on the World Wide Web.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010Customer Solution Case Study

SituationSignSwift helps organizations and individuals advertise with digital signage. The startup company provides the software tools needed to create, edit, and display digital signs through a template-based approach that includes stock photography and tools for image editing and display management. SignSwift also provides white-label solutions for third-party display manufacturers. Customers can manage their signage projects on the SignSwift Web site using browser-based tools and can download the rendered output onto flash memory cards for playback on a computer monitor, digital photo frame, TV, or another playback device.

In 2009, the founder of SignSwift had a limited budget to create a reliable and scalable Web site that was also highly visible to search engines. Simple-to-use development tools would be crucial to the company’s success. Not only could they facilitate rapid development and speed time-to-market, but more intuitive tools could also help employees manage multiple roles. “In a small startup, one person often needs to do the work that five people would do on a larger team,” explains Ian Mercer, Owner and CEO of SignSwift.

The company also needed to provide best-of-breed rendering capabilities for customers’ digital signage displays. Specifically, the solution had to render high-quality text and graphics with drop-shadows and other effects overlaid on images. SignSwift

also wanted to provide an exact pixel-for-pixel match for its customers’ display resolution. In addition, the SignSwift Web site needed to be innovative, easy to maintain, and visible to global search engines.

SolutionIn 2009, the company began to evaluate technologies from the open-source community and numerous vendors. Ultimately, SignSwift chose to build its business with Microsoft software. Through the Microsoft BizSpark program, SignSwift could deploy Microsoft products without any initial investments. “The Microsoft BizSpark program made it very easy and affordable to adopt the Microsoft Web development stack,” says Mercer. “However, the main reason we chose Microsoft was the power of its unified development environment and the capabilities of the Microsoft .NET Framework 4. Also, Microsoft Visual Studio gives us a single, familiar interface that encompasses the entire range of tasks—from creating the user interface to designing the underlying database tables.”

Numerous products from Microsoft support the company’s Web site (see Figure 1):

Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.5 with the Application Request Routing extension manages application requests.

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Standard data management software stores all application data.

Microsoft Expression Design 3 design software supports the creation of all graphics for the Web site.

Microsoft Expression Blend 3 design software facilitates the creation of digital signage templates.

Windows Presentation Foundation renders all images.

The Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard operating system supports physical servers and provides the Hyper-V technology that SignSwift plans to use to create virtual servers in the future.

Microsoft Message Queuing provides a reliable communications pathway between the company’s Web applications and image-rendering engines.

SignSwift initially began to build its Web site with the Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 development system and the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 on a shared virtual server, using

Microsoft ASP.NET Web Forms. However, the company upgraded to Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate and the Microsoft .NET Framework 4 soon after the beta versions became available, to take advantage of new features that could simplify numerous aspects of development.

For example, Visual Studio 2010 includes a Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework, Microsoft ASP.NET MVC 2, for developing Web applications. ASP.NET MVC 2 provides a clean separation in application logic where developers create models that represent data in the application domain, views that contain only presentation information, and controllers that choose what to display based on user input. As a result, developers can focus on one aspect of application development, testing, and maintenance at a time. MVC 2 also makes use of the ASP.NET routing engine to handle all requests rather than having application requests specify one Web page to display, as Web Forms does. Visual Studio 2010 also includes the jQuery JavaScript library that can help manipulate and edit images from a browser.

The .NET Framework 4 includes the Microsoft ADO.NET Entity Framework 4, which automatically generates all of the code necessary to access a database—and makes it possible to use Language-Integrated Query (LINQ) to query any data source. Together these capabilities greatly reduce the amount of code necessary

Figure 1. The SignSwift Web site runs on many Microsoft products and technologies.

to access a database and they increase performance through efficient generation of Transact-SQL (T-SQL) code. Lazy loading in the ADO.NET Entity Framework 4 further reduces the amount of code required, while eager loading can be added easily, where necessary, for performance. In addition, developers can enhance their own efficiency by taking advantage of tools such as IntelliSense to write LINQ queries.

Upgrading the code to Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4 took one developer three days. It took another week to migrate all of the existing public-facing Web Forms pages to MVC 2. “With request routing in ASP.NET 3.5 and ASP.NET 4, we can use Web Forms and MVC together in the same application, which makes migrating from one to the other much easier,” says Mercer.

Today, SignSwift uses MVC 2 to create all of its Web pages and services. In addition, the company’s site runs on a dedicated server farm that includes Silicon Mechanics server computers with quad-core Intel Xeon processors and Intel solid-state drives.

BenefitsBy using Microsoft software, SignSwift has been able to quickly launch its Web-based business with less code, fewer developers, and fewer errors. The reliable, high-performance solution is affordable and scalable—and it provides for excellent image-rendering quality and visibility to search engines.

Reduces Code by 5 Percent, Cuts Costs, and Accelerates Development With Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate and the .NET Framework 4, SignSwift has minimized its application code and the need for additional resources. “By using the ADO.NET Entity Framework 4, we no longer have to write our own data access layer; it’s generated for us automatically from our database,” Mercer explains. “That’s one less developer needed, right there! With the .NET Framework 4, we’ve been able to eliminate about 5 percent of our data access code because lazy loading is now on by default and foreign key relationships are now easier to manage. Tools like IntelliSense have also increased productivity and reduced errors.”

SignSwift has launched its business with minimal resources and without sacrificing quality or efficiency. “As a startup, cost really matters,” says Mercer. “Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate and the .NET Framework 4 reduce the time-to-market for startups with features such as the ADO.NET Entity Framework 4. It’s also great having access to all of the other Microsoft products through the Microsoft BizSpark program.”

Boosts Customer SatisfactionCompile-time checking, IntelliSense, and the integrated development and test environment capabilities in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate have reduced the chance of errors in production code, which has increased customer

“With request routing in ASP.NET 3.5 and ASP.NET 4, we can use Web Forms and MVC together in the same application, which makes migrating from one to the other much easier.”Ian Mercer, Owner and CEO, SignSwift

satisfaction. “Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate works well with our continuous integration server to ensure that every software build compiles and passes all tests before being deployed,” says Mercer. “We are also looking forward to using code contracts in the .NET Framework 4 because more checking can be done earlier in the development cycle, which will help to further reduce bugs. This is critical because the longer a bug is left in code, the more expensive it is to fix.”

Provides Quality and Flexibility SignSwift is able to deliver professional digital signage for customers through its use of Microsoft software. “By using Expression Blend 3 and Windows Presentation Foundation, we can create intelligent templates that can automatically resize to any display resolution or aspect format without distorting any images or text,” says Mercer. “So whether our customers want a 16:9 or a 4:3 image, we can deliver it from a single template.” The solution also makes it easy to customize signage. “Because the output of Expression Blend 3 is an XML file, we can easily annotate it with the extra data that we need to render composited images, which makes it easier to manage design changes.”

Promotes VisibilitySignSwift was able to design its Web pages to increase the company’s global visibility through search engine optimization (SEO). “With ASP.NET MVC 2, it is very easy to annotate

every action method with attributes that help with SEO,” says Mercer. “For example, we can ensure that every action that is a page has a proper title tag, meta description, and canonical URL—and we can be sure that each of those attributes is just the right length. Our sitemap.xml file is also generated automatically from these attributes, eliminating any possibility of errors or omissions in the information we supply to search engines.”

In addition, SignSwift uses ASP.NET routing to maintain multiple URLs for a single page. As a result, developers can move pages and update URLs without breaking any in-bound links from other sites. “With ActionFilterAttributes in ASP.NET MVC 2, we can map multiple URLs onto the same action within a controller so that no URL is ever orphaned,” explains Mercer.

Delivers Performance and ScalabilityBy building its Web site with Microsoft software, SignSwift can quickly and confidently grow its business. “The ADO.NET Entity Framework 4 has made it easy to deliver a high-performance Web site because it generates efficient T-SQL code,” Mercer says. “Complex, paged queries are easy to express in LINQ and all the hard work of translating them into T-SQL is handled for us.”

The Web site can also easily manage increasing volumes of traffic. “Our use of Microsoft Message Queuing and

“With the .NET Framework 4, we’ve been able to eliminate about 5 percent of our data access code because lazy loading is now on by default and foreign key relationships are now easier to manage.”Ian Mercer, Owner and CEO, SignSwift

Application Request Routing in IIS 7.5 means we can scale the service rapidly and load balance between servers as our customer base grows,” Mercer says. “Virtualization with Windows Server 2008 R2 will also allow us to maximize the utilization of our systems and realize tremendous performance from each 1U of rack space, further reducing our monthly costs.”

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 is an integrated development system that helps simplify the entire development process from design to deployment. Unleash your creativity with powerful prototyping, modeling, and design tools that help you bring your vision to life. Work within a personalized environment that helps accelerate the coding process and supports the use of your existing skills, and target a growing number of platforms, including Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and cloud services. Also, work more efficiently thanks to integrated testing and debugging tools that you can use to find and fix bugs quickly and easily to help ensure high-quality solutions.

For more information about Visual Studio 2010, go to:www.msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio

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 SignSwift products and services, call (425) 522-2040 or visit the Web site at: www.signswift.com

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.Document published April 2010

Software and Services Microsoft Visual Studio

− Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate

Microsoft Expression Blend 3 Microsoft Expression Design 3 Microsoft Server Product Portfolio

− Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard

− Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Standard

Services− Microsoft BizSpark

Technologies− IntelliSense− Internet Information Services 7.5− Microsoft ADO.NET Entity

Framework 4− Microsoft ASP.NET 4− Microsoft ASP.NET MVC 2− Microsoft Message Queuing− Microsoft .NET Framework 4− Windows Presentation Foundation

Hardware Silicon Mechanics server computers