Windows AzurePartner Solution Case Study

Application Services Provider Increases Revenue by 50 Percent with Cloud Service

OverviewCountry or Region: AustraliaIndustry: IT services

Partner ProfileBased in Melbourne, Australia, CaterXpress is an application services provider that delivers web-based production and account management solutions to businesses in the food service industry.

Business SituationCaterXpress wanted to serve its customers more efficiently, launch new services, and reach new markets while controlling its IT costs and refocusing its small staff on the company’s business priorities.

SolutionIn February 2010, CaterXpress built and launched a new web-based service called FoodStorm by using Windows Azure, the Microsoft cloud service development, hosting, and management environment.

Benefits Lower IT costs New services, new revenue Greater system performance Enhanced business focus

“Since launching FoodStorm on Windows Azure, our revenue has grown 50 percent, and so has our customer base…. In 12 months, we expect revenue to be up another 50 to 100 percent.”

Anthony Super, Director, CaterXpress

CaterXpress wanted to redesign and apply its catering solutions to food production, food distribution, and care services businesses. But before the company could reach out to new customers, it needed to overcome challenges in its server infrastructure. The operational costs were high, and the company’s small staff of software developers spent too much time monitoring and maintaining the server environment. Despite the cost and effort, CaterXpress still struggled to meet demand during seasonal business spikes in the food service industry. In 2010, CaterXpress used Windows Azure to launch a new web-based service called FoodStorm. Now the company can serve its customers more effectively, reach new markets, and focus its staff on important business priorities. By using Windows Azure, CaterXpress increased revenue by 50 percent while reducing its infrastructure costs by more than 60 percent.

SituationIn 2007, applications services provider CaterXpress began developing and delivering solutions that help catering companies automate and streamline account, event, and menu management. With just two full-time developers, CaterXpress delivered its solutions as online services, hosted on the company’s own servers.

CaterXpress quickly saw that it could apply its solutions in other areas of the food service industry besides catering, such as packaged food production, food distribution, and food service for care facilities. “We saw an opportunity to focus on four niche areas where we believed there were not many effective solutions available, especially for the small to midsize business,” says Anthony Super, Director at CaterXpress.

Before CaterXpress could reach out to customers in new markets, it needed to overcome the challenges it was already facing in its server infrastructure. To offer its solutions as online managed services, CaterXpress had to build and maintain a large group of servers, and it had to manage and back up its customers’ data, which required some time-consuming manual processes.

The cost was high for a small business just starting out. CaterXpress spent more than US$15,000 for the capital purchase of its server hardware alone and paid $1,000 every month for space in a data center in Melbourne, Australia. The company could not afford to hire a full-time network engineer, so its software developers were also responsible for continuously monitoring and maintaining the server environment. “We wanted to focus on developing new products and growing our

business,” says Super. “But we were always swamped with server maintenance and support issues, which were outside our expertise, so it took time out from what we wanted to do.”

Even though it spent more capital and staff resources than it wanted to on infrastructure maintenance, CaterXpress struggled to keep its network performing adequately at all times. The food service industry, especially catering, tends to peak during the Christmas holiday season, which created a significant increase in the volume of business that CaterXpress managed through its online services, straining the capacity of the company’s server environment. Programs would often run slowly, and the system experienced failures due to hardware and network capacity issues.

“We couldn’t afford to invest in the server capacity we needed for one month and then let it run at 1 percent for the rest of the year,” says Super. “But our customers don’t care about that. It’s their busy time and they just want their orders processed.”

CaterXpress wanted to serve its customers more efficiently, launch new services, and reach new markets. Instead of trying to support its own server infrastructure, CaterXpress realized that it could use cloud technology—remote computing resources delivered as services over the Internet—to help it meet its opportunities by controlling costs and focusing its small staff on the company’s most important business priorities. “We needed to remove the burden of having to manage our own infrastructure resources,” says Super.

SolutionIn 2010, CaterXpress built and launched a new service called FoodStorm by using

“We built FoodStorm from the ground up to take full advantage of the high availability, performance, and scalability in Windows Azure.”

Anthony Super, Director, CaterXpress

Windows Azure, the Microsoft cloud service development, hosting, and management environment. Windows Azure provides on-demand compute, storage, networking, and content delivery capabilities through Microsoft data centers around the world. CaterXpress developers used the Microsoft .NET Framework, the Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 development system, the Microsoft Visual C# development tool, and a community preview version of Windows Azure to build and deliver FoodStorm.

“We built FoodStorm from the ground up to take full advantage of the high availability, performance, and scalability in Windows Azure,” says Super.

FoodStorm is a single web-based service for the food service industry that can be delivered in one of four editions: production, distribution, catering, and care. Packaged food manufacturers can use the production edition to help manage scheduling, materials, supplier ordering, and stock control. Food wholesalers and distributors can enable online ordering and manage stock control, delivery, and invoicing with the distribution edition of FoodStorm. Caterers can use FoodStorm to develop online shopping carts for customers; generate kitchen and delivery reports; and manage quotes, orders, and invoices. The care mode in FoodStorm helps nursing homes and other care facilities manage meal service by helping to track customer requirements and preferences, generate meal service reports, and manage meal rotations for any number of weeks. “We are the only online provider that can deliver an off-the-shelf solution to manage meal rotations,” says Super.

CaterXpress began offering FoodStorm in February 2010, and it began moving

existing customers from its internally hosted solutions, eventually moving 95 percent of its customers to FoodStorm, delivered on Windows Azure. To store, manage, and back up customer data, the company used features in Windows Azure such as Queue service, Blob Storage, and Table Storage.

“Table Storage was incredibly simple to work with, and it lets us automatically replicate data in real time across separate data centers,” says Super. “We used it to design a stable, efficient database that does not require constant tuning and that makes it much easier to scale up FoodStorm during the holiday season.”

To help safeguard customer data, CaterXpress built an access control system that allows customers to assign users and roles. CaterXpress customers pay a monthly fee per site, based on four standard plans that offer a range of functionality and capacity. CaterXpress pays a monthly fee for the Windows Azure resources it uses as it uses them, and it can scale Windows Azure up or down as demand requires, so the company can forecast its monthly costs without having to budget for large capital purchases.

BenefitsBy using Windows Azure to build and deliver FoodStorm, CaterXpress can serve its customers more effectively with less effort, launch new services, reach customers in new markets, and increase revenue while controlling costs and focusing its staff on the company’s most important business priorities.

Lower IT CostsCaterXpress reduced its hosting costs by 60 percent, even though it is using twice the computing and data storage resources it

“By using Windows Azure... we can give our customers a service that never goes down, that always runs fast, even during peak periods, and that provides better data protection than I could ever offer in an on-premises environment.”

Anthony Super, Director, CaterXpress

needed before launching FoodStorm on Windows Azure. The company is also serving more customers without increasing its staff size. Instead of purchasing more hardware or facing increased data center costs, CaterXpress can scale up its computing capacity with only a small increase in its monthly fee and no increase in its IT management responsibilities, so it can handle its customers’ seasonal spikes while keeping costs under control.

“Having this incredible infrastructure available and fully managed by Microsoft saves us massive amounts of time,” says Super. “Coming from much larger companies, I’m proud that my infrastructure is as good if not better than they could deliver.”

New Services, New RevenueSince February 2010, CaterXpress migrated 45 catering customers from its old services to FoodStorm, and by using Windows Azure to deliver new services for markets in food manufacturing, food distribution, and care services, CaterXpress increased revenue and expanded its customer base. CaterXpress customers have used FoodStorm to process more than $100 million in food orders and manage food service at major events, such as Formula One auto racing and the Australian International Airshow.

“Since launching FoodStorm on Windows Azure, our revenue has grown 50 percent, and so has our customer base,” says Super. “We’re in three new markets, and in 2011, we expanded into the United Kingdom. In 12 months, we expect revenue to be up another 50 to 100 percent, with 100 percent growth in new customers across Australia and the United Kingdom.”

Greater System PerformanceBy relying on the vast computing resources in Windows Azure, CaterXpress solved its seasonal capacity issues, and it can store and back up its customers’ data without having to spend time doing it manually.

“By using Windows Azure, we’ve delivered virtually 100 percent uptime, something we couldn’t dream of previously,” says Super. “So we can give our customers a service that never goes down, that always runs fast, even during peak periods, and that provides better data protection than I could ever offer in an on-premises environment.”

Enhanced Business FocusDevelopers at CaterXpress can now use time they previously spent on infrastructure maintenance to build enhancements for FoodStorm, design new offerings, and enhance the company’s business opportunities. CaterXpress has already introduced updates to FoodStorm, such as automated ordering for care facilities, online payment processing, and communications capabilities that will eventually allow customers working in one edition of FoodStorm, such as catering, to collaborate directly with companies working in other modes, such as production or distribution.

“We can focus on what we do best now, which is developing great solutions for food service businesses,” says Super. “With the infrastructure weight off our shoulders, we can use Windows Azure to plan new offerings and reach into new market segments.”

“With the infrastructure weight off our shoulders, we can use Windows Azure to plan new offerings and reach into new market segments.”

Anthony Super, Director, CaterXpress

Windows Azure PlatformThe Windows Azure platform provides developers the functionality to build applications that span from consumer to enterprise scenarios. The key components of the Windows Azure platform are:

Windows Azure. Windows Azure is the development, service hosting, and service management environment for the Windows Azure platform. It provides developers with on-demand compute, storage, bandwidth, content delivery, middleware, and marketplace capabilities to build, host, and scale web applications through Microsoft data centers.

Microsoft SQL Azure. Microsoft SQL Azure is a self-managed, multitenant relational cloud database service built on Microsoft SQL Server technologies. It provides built-in high availability, fault tolerance, and scale-out database capabilities, as well as cloud-based data synchronization and reporting, to build custom enterprise and web applications and extend the reach of data assets.

To learn more, visit: www.windowsazure.com

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 CaterXpress products and services, visit the website at: www.foodstorm.com

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

Document published December 2011

Software and Services Windows Azure− Windows Azure− Windows Azure Blob Storage− Windows Azure Table Storage

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

Technologies− Microsoft .NET Framework 4