1. Windows Azure
Customer Solution Case Study
Vehicle Values Provider Saves
$100,000 with Easy-to-Manage
Software-plus-Services
Overview “With the flexibility of Windows Azure, we
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Manufacturing— can focus on building and delivering new
Automotive
features to our customers—helping us
Customer Profile increase our competitive advantage.”
Established in 1926 and based
Andy Lapin, Director of Enterprise Architecture, Kelley Blue Book
in Irvine, California, Kelley Blue
Book is a premier vehicle Kelley Blue Book is a premier provider of vehicle
valuation service. It employs
390 people. The company’s
pricing information to consumers, automotive
Web site has 14 million visitors dealers, governments, and the finance and
each month.
insurance industries. The company developed its
Business Situation information-rich, high-traffic Web site using the
Kelley Blue Book sought a
solution that would enable it to
Microsoft® .NET Framework 3.5 and supports it
scale up quickly to meet the with two hosted data centers. In an effort to
capacity demands of its high-
traffic Web site and reduce its
reduce hosting costs and ease management of its
dependency on costly infrastructure, Kelley Blue Book decided to host
hardware.
and manage its Web site using a software-plus-
Solution services model. After evaluating software-plus-
After evaluating other platforms,
Kelley Blue Book chose to use a
services solutions, the company implemented the
software-plus-services model Windows Azure™ platform—which proved to be a
and moved its Web site to the
Windows Azure™ platform.
straightforward process. As a result, Kelley Blue
Book is able to reduce capital expenditures for
Benefits
• Reduced capital costs with
new hardware, increase its competitive
flexible scalability advantage by focusing on delivering new
• Shifted focus to delivering
• Saved U.S.$100,000
features, save U.S.$100,000 annually in hosting
annually costs, and use IT resources more strategically.
• Improved IT efficiency

3. Situation Framework 3.5 with a server
First published in 1926, Kelley infrastructure supported by the
Blue Book has grown to be a Windows Server® 2003 Standard
trusted source of automobile operating system and Microsoft
information, such as new- and SQL Server® 2008 Standard
used-car values. The company’s Edition data management
primary mission is to provide an software. The site has 14 million
automotive information and value visitors each month; one out of
exchange that gives consumers, three car shoppers in the United
automotive dealers, government, States uses Kelley Blue Book to
and companies in the finance and conduct online research before
insurance industries the making a vehicle purchase.
information they need to facilitate
vehicle transactions. Originally To support the compute power
only a published book, Kelley Blue and data storage that the
“Using Windows Book is also now a Web site company needs to run its high-
(www.kbb.com), which launched traffic Web site, Kelley Blue Book
Azure .… We will more than a decade ago. The has two physical data centers—
see $100,000 in company is based in Irvine, one primary data center and one
California, and has 390 failover data center. The
savings each year employees. company owns its own servers,
but runs them in a hosting facility
—a number that will The Web site has grown leaps where it rents server space. As
increase because and bounds since its conception the company added new
in 1995, allowing the company to products and features to its Web
we would normally continually expand its business site, and as traffic to the site
and offer new products and increased over time, Kelley Blue
continue to add features. In 2002, for example, in Book responded by adding more
servers to that order to give consumers actual servers to its infrastructure to
transaction prices for new cars, handle peak traffic. “When we hit
data center as we the company gathered data and a point where we were
analyzed transactions from exceeding traffic expectations, or
grow.” thousands of dealers across the when we deployed new code or
United States and introduced the new functionality that required
Kelley Blue Book Value for New more computing resources, we
Cars. In 2009, Kelley Blue Book would buy enough servers to
launched “The Trusted handle the maximum load and
Marketplace,” giving consumers those servers would live on
the ability to complete their perpetually,” explains Andy
vehicle research, conduct new- Lapin, Director of Enterprise
and used-vehicle inventory Architecture for Kelley Blue Book.
searches and find their next car,
all on one convenient and easy- However, with daily, weekly, and
to-use Web site. season fluctuations in site traffic,
the load was not evenly
Today, the Kelley Blue Book Web distributed over time. As a result,
site is built on the Microsoft® .NET though the infrastructure had the

4. capacity to support traffic during to scale up more quickly to
high-volume periods, the manage increasing site traffic,
company was also paying for while at the same time making its
hosting services for under-utilized server use during nonpeak times
servers during nonpeak times. as cost-effective as possible.
“We kept buying and buying
hardware to ensure that we could Solution
handle peak load,” says Lapin. To improve the efficiency of its
platform, Kelley Blue Book
Managing the servers also was investigated the possibility of
time-consuming. For instance, to moving to a software-plus-
add servers to its failover data services model. The company
center location, which is out-of- looked at two solutions: the
state, the company had to order Windows Azure™ platform and
the servers from a vendor, fly Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
personnel to the data center, and (EC2). In April 2009, Kelley Blue
build and rack the servers—a Book decided to migrate to the
process that took up to six Windows Azure platform, a
weeks. When Kelley Blue Book solution that provides “cloud”
needed to scale up quickly, such services, the hosting and
as when the “Cash for Clunkers” management of Web applications
initiative launched in 2009, a six- and services on the Internet
week lead time to deploy new through Microsoft data centers.
servers proved an inefficient The solution is designed for high
model. Also, despite the availability and quick scaling to
company’s best efforts to match usage needs.
mitigate project risks, not every
deployment was flawless. The company chose the Windows
Sometimes IT personnel found Azure platform based, in part, on
that additional computing the services the platform offers:
resources were needed after Windows Azure, a cloud services
new code was deployed. “If we operating system; Microsoft SQL
deploy new functionality and we Azure, for extending storage to
find the whole data center is the cloud. In addition, it chose
down, we get into firefighting Windows Azure for its pay-per-
mode—we do everything we can use cost model, which allows the
to get it back up quickly, or figure company to pay only for the
out how to roll back code. compute processing and storage
Sometimes you can do that—and that it uses. “We had to find a
sometimes you can’t,” says way of justifying whether the
Lapin. ‘cloud’ made sense to us. The
Windows Azure cost model is
Though Kelley Blue Book had the simple to figure out and easy to
server capacity it needed to calculate the costs involved,”
handle its peak Web site traffic, it explains Lapin. “The Amazon
sought a more efficient solution. model was more complicated and
The company wanted to be able we couldn’t realistically

5. determine what our savings persistence,” says Lapin. The
would be.” company analyzed and then
implemented Windows Azure
An Easy-to-Develop Solution Blob Storage and Windows Azure
Developers at Kelley Blue Book Tables.
were able to use their existing
skill sets to deploy code to the As a way to reduce load on its
Windows Azure platform, which remaining physical SQL Server
made the implementation quick databases, Kelley Blue Book is
and straightforward. For the most testing moving data that is
part, developers reused code traditionally stored relationally,
from the original Web site, such as editorial content, and
developed with the Microsoft moving it to Blob Storage and
Visual Studio® 2008 Professional accessing it on the Internet
Edition development system, and through data centers hosted by
simply migrated it to the Windows Microsoft. It moved [several
Azure platform. “We’re not hundred] megabytes of data to
forcing developers to write Blob Storage, and now can
different code—it’s still the access that data through those
familiar .NET-based code,” data centers instead of accessing
explains Lapin. “Developers it on its physical SQL Server
don’t have to make dramatic databases. In the future, Kelley
changes when deploying to Blue Book plans to move its
Windows Azure versus deploying physical SQL Server databases to
to a local data center. That is one SQL Azure.
of the things that makes Windows
Azure the only logical choice.” Benefits
Using the Windows Azure
The company is moving all 27 Platform, Kelley Blue Book
Web servers and nine SQL Server efficiently implemented a cost-
databases to the cloud with effective, flexible model for its
“It is nice to have Windows Azure, giving Kelley Web site. By moving to a cloud
Blue Book the flexibility to solution for kbb.com, the
a flexible solution redeploy those servers for other company was able to reduce
company needs without capital expenditures, as well as
like Windows Azure additional infrastructure data center and hosting costs. IT
where we don’t investments. personnel are free now to focus
on more strategic tasks, thanks
have to pay any Data Persistence Using Software-plus- to enterprise-class service from
Services Microsoft. Today the company is
upfront costs to To take full advantage of the focused on delivering new
get something software-plus-services model, features and services to
Kelley Blue Book looked at customers instead of managing
deployed quickly.” Windows Azure storage solutions. risks at its data center.
Andy Lapin, Director of “We wanted to better utilize the
Enterprise Architecture, Kelley cloud and look at other storage Decreased Capital Expenditures with
Blue Book alternatives to ensure data Flexible Scalability

6. “With Windows With Windows Azure, Kelley Blue company maintain its competitive
Book can avoid making costly advantage.
Azure, we never investments in IT infrastructure at
its failover data center and has “With the flexibility of Windows
have to focus on the flexibility it needs to scale up Azure, we can focus on building
updating a server quickly. Instead of buying and delivering new features to
additional servers each time the our customers—helping us
or changing its company needs more capacity increase our competitive
for its Web site or each time it advantage,” concludes Lapin.
configuration. It is deploys a new product, it can
all managed for us quickly scale up without making Reduced Data Center and Hosting Costs
costly hardware investments by With the Windows Azure Platform,
and all we have to using the processing power and Kelley Blue Book can manage its
storage capacity offered by Web application using the
worry about is Windows Azure and data centers Internet and data centers hosted
deploying code to hosted by Microsoft. “It is nice to by Microsoft. Though it is keeping
have a flexible solution like its physical primary data center
one place.” Windows Azure where we don’t for now, it is moving its compute
have to pay any upfront costs to processing and storage at its
get something deployed quickly,” failover data center to the
says Lapin. “We have the “cloud.” As a result, it is
flexibility that lets us figure out decommissioning a total of 36
things as we go at a low cost.” physical servers for kbb.com—27
Web servers and nine SQL Server
Improved Ability to Deliver New Services databases—and redeploying
As Kelley Blue Book grows, it those servers to support other
continues to add new services Kelley Blue Book products.
and features to its Web site. The
company has added new Kelley Blue Book analyzed the
features at a fast rate since it costs required to run on-premise
developed the application on servers compared to using
the .NET Framework in 2006. In Windows Azure and expects to
fact, the company often deploys save U.S.$100,000 in data center
new code every week. Instead of and hosting costs alone with the
worrying about the efficiency of pay-by-use model of the platform.
the Web site each time it adds “Using Windows Azure is actually
new features, or the risk involved less expensive than just the
with deploying new physical power costs of our failover data
servers each time it adds a new center,” says Lapin. “We will
product or increases capacity for see $100,000 in savings each
growing traffic, Kelley Blue Book year—a number that will increase
is now able to focus on innovation because we would normally
and delivering new products. The continue to add servers to that
company is confident in the data center as we grow—and that
continued responsiveness of the does not include the personnel it
Web site with Windows Azure—a requires to maintain the data
key differentiator that helps the center.”

7. More Strategic Use of IT Resources
Kelley Blue Book streamlined
management of the IT
infrastructure that supports its
Web site. Instead of deploying
new code and applications and
applying service packs and
updates to each server
individually, the company can rely
on enterprise-class service
provided by Microsoft. “With
Windows Azure, we never have
to focus on updating a server or
changing its configuration,” says
Lapin. “It is all managed for us
and all we have to worry about is
deploying code to one place.”
By moving from on-premise
servers to a cloud solution for
kbb.com, Kelley Blue Book can
assign IT personnel to focus on
more strategic tasks. For
instance, instead of managing
those servers at the data center,
IT personnel can focus more on
internal IT tasks. “We have plenty
of work that needs to be done.
Now those employees can work
on more strategic efforts without
constantly being pestered with
issues at the data center,”
explains Lapin. In addition,
because IT employees can work
more efficiently, Kelley Blue Book
is able to hire new IT staff at a
decelerated rate it has in the
past.

8. For More Information Windows Azure Platform cloud-based relational and
For more information about The Windows Azure platform self-managed database
service built on Microsoft SQL
Microsoft products and provides an excellent foundation
Server 2008 technologies.
services, call the Microsoft for expanding online product and
Sales Information Center at service offerings. The main
To learn more about the Windows
(800) 426-9400. In Canada, call components include:
Azure platform, visit:
the Microsoft Canada • Windows Azure. Windows Azure
www.windowsazure.com
Information Centre at (877) is the development, service
568-2495. Customers in the hosting, and service
United States and Canada who management environment for
are deaf or hard-of-hearing can the Windows Azure platform.
reach Microsoft text telephone Windows Azure provides
(TTY/TDD) services at (800) developers with on-demand
892-5234. Outside the 50 compute and storage to host,
United States and Canada, scale, and manage Web
please contact your local applications on the Internet
Microsoft subsidiary. To access through Microsoft data
information using the World centers. In addition, Windows
Wide Web, go to: Azure serves developers’
www.microsoft.com connectivity needs through
the following services.
For more information about 〉 The Service Bus connects
Neudesic products and
services and applications
services, call (949) 754-4500 or across network
visit the Web site at: boundaries to help
www.neudesic.com developers build
distributed applications.
For more information about 〉 The Access Control Service
Kelley Blue Book products and provides federated,
services, call (800) BLUE-BOOK claims-based access
or visit the Web site at: control for REST Web
www.kbb.com services.
• Microsoft SQL Azure. Microsoft
Additional Resources: SQL Azure offers the first
Download: Get Tools and SDK
Software and Services • Microsoft Visual Studio
• Windows Azure Platform • Microsoft Visual Studio 2008
• Windows Azure Professional Edition
• Microsoft SQL Azure • Solutions
• Technologies • Software-plus-services
• Microsoft ASP.NET
• Microsoft .NET Framework Partner
3.5 • Neudesic
• Microsoft Server Product
Portfolio
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005
This case study is for informational
Standard Edition
purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO • Windows Server 2003
WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN
THIS SUMMARY.
Document published November 2009