"Windows Azure completes our vision of bringing analytical ability to every employee. We feel that business intelligence should not solely be an IT function—it should be available to every employee. That’s where powerful productivity and change takes place. Azure delivers economies of scale at an enormously affordable cost. “

Country: United StatesIndustry: Hosting, Application-Service, and Software-as-a-Service Providers

Partner Profile:Izenda LLC is a leading provider of self-service reporting and dashboards for the ASP.NET platform. Izenda's mission is to create simple tools that empower ordinary people to make better business decisions while integrating deeply into their existing systems.  At Izenda, we define software as the experiences we create for our customers and not just the features in our products. For more information visit www.izenda.com

Business Situation: Traditional BI solutions require a sizeable capital investment, considerable IT resources, and can take up to a year to deploy. Cost and time barriers are a significant reason why BI solutions aren’t universally available within a company and the overall penetration across organizations of all sizes is still minimal.

Solution: Izenda provides a Windows Azure cloud-based BI reporting and dashboard solution that allows all levels of employees to dynamically and securely build, analyze, share, and respond to data that provides important metrics about their company.

Benefits: With Windows Azure™, Izenda has experienced shorter sales cycles, expansion into new market segments, and an overall enhanced value proposition for its customers.

Sanjay Bhatia, CEO, Izenda

Izenda is the market leader in

providing self-service reports and

dashboards to the ASP.NET

platform. The company’s software

radically changes how business

intelligence is delivered by

transforming the reporting process

into something that no longer

involves IT or development. Izenda

partnered with Microsoft to deliver

its solution to an even wider audience by leveraging the massive scalability

of Windows Azure™. Deploying on the cloud will lower costs and barriers

for many customers that do not have the staff to manage and maintain

physical on-premise servers. More importantly, larger organizations have

been able to successfully pilot Izenda’s software and realize an instant ROI.

Izenda leverages the impressive scalability and overall simplicity of

Microsoft’s Azure platform to reach customers who do not have sufficient

budget or staff to pilot traditional on-premise solutions. “Azure truly

completes our vision of delivering a refreshingly simple approach to

delivering insight to business users and decision makers. Setting up a pilot

used to take days or weeks and now we do it in minutes”, says Sanjay

Bhatia, CEO.SituationMost businesses can benefit from turning more of their data into actionable information. Successful companies rely on business intelligence (BI) to make strategic decisions on the direction of their company, to solve daily issues, track progress on goals across their organization, and for a host of other purposes. The more accessible and useful the BI reports and dashboards are across the company, the better the chance for success. Ultimately, BI can create significant competitive advantages for an organization that fully embrace its use. However, getting to that point is not always easy or inexpensive- until now.

Traditional BI solutions require a sizeable capital investment, considerable IT resources, and can take up to a year to deploy. Once deployed, getting additional reports and dashboards created, or adding new data, requires additional IT resources and puts an added strain on the IT department. These cost and time barriers are a significant reason

why BI solutions aren’t universally available within a company and the overall penetration across organizations of all sizes is still minimal. In mid-size to small companies, the resources to utilize BI solutions can be nonexistent.

SolutionIn 2006, Izenda started changing the way companies deploy and use intelligence across the organization. Built entirely on Microsoft technologies, Izenda’s vision is to create agile reports and dashboard tools that empower every level of employee to make better business decisions—while at the same time are fast and easy to deploy. Izenda Reports, the company’s flagship product, enables businesses to share information without the need for IT for report creation and manipulation, and without heavy investments in traditional BI solutions.

Izenda provides a reporting and dashboard solution that allows all levels of employees to dynamically and securely build, analyze, share, and respond to data that provides

important metrics about their company. With rich dashboard capability, an intuitive interface that’s easy to learn, the ability to generate any type of report on the fly, while securely sharing it with others, Izenda is quickly being adopted by small businesses, large enterprise customers, and software application developers to incorporate into their applications. Large Microsoft customers such as Volvo, Bristol Meyers Squibb, Wellpoint, Verizon, and the United States Navy all use Izenda to power their BI needs.

Izenda’s approach is similar blogging. Most bloggers do not have to put in an IT request when they want to add a picture to their content. Neither should a user who has a simple reporting request. The security is taken care of on the back end. The Izenda solution includes a robust enterprise-grade security system that is used by some of the world’s largest and most demanding organizations. The security API that ensures that nobody sees the wrong data so users can get what they need safely. The company’s solution completely replaces expensive classroom training with simple 1-5 minute videos users can view on demand. The approach of adding in a Microsoft-approved report and dashboard generator has saved many of Izenda’s customers 3-5 man years of development time.

“Our customers can save up to $250,000 in IT support and development costs every year,” commented Izenda’s President and Founder, Sanjay Bhatia. “We’re seeing tremendous interest in our solution with hundreds of customers integrating Izenda into almost 1,000 applications so far.” Izenda Completes Vision of Business Intelligence for the Masses with Windows Azure Platform

When first introduced, the Izenda solution was built to run on a customer’s on-premise server and accessed by the end user over the Internet using their browser. This approach maximized the security and customization capabilities, while still providing the benefits of a versatile, user-friendly approach. However, this approach also requires IT resources for setting up

Gauges track assigned metrics clearly

and deploying the Izenda solution. For some organizations, there are times when the availability of IT resources is a real challenge. IT Departments are typically stretched to the limit from requests and demands throughout the company. Izenda has found a way to overcome these challenges with the Windows Azure platform.

BenefitsIzenda realized that overcoming the issues of IT resources would require a unique solution. Cloud computing addressed this issue through fast deployments and massively scalable

infrastructure Izenda evaluated all of the major companies providing cloud computing services and chose the Windows Azure Platform. Windows Azure provides Izenda with a number of superior capabilities, including:

Infinite Scalability- Izenda can scale up or down to accommodate usage and new customers on an unlimited basis. Windows Azure can literally accommodate thousands of new Izenda customers every day.

Database Partitioning- The Windows Azure Platform is the only cloud service that allows Izenda to partition the database for each customer through SQL Azure. This is a critical requirement for Izenda’s cloud solution.

Massive Parallelism- Only Windows Azure provides the level of parallelism both in terms of simultaneous users as well as database functionality. Since the Azure platform allows Izenda to partition their database for each customer, Izenda can accommodate thousands of simultaneous customers and not have any performance issues.

Automation- Izenda can have new customers automatically sign up for their solution and the Windows Azure Platform will automatically partition and parallelize the customer’s data base with no intervention required by Izenda.

Significant Cost Savings- In addition to meeting all of Izenda’s requirements and usage profile, Izenda determined that the Windows Azure Platform was at

least 20% less expensive than the other major providers.

Bhatia sums up what the Windows Azure platform means for the company: “The advantages we get with Windows Azure in terms of massive scalability and database partitioning just aren’t available anywhere else.” More importantly, Windows Azure has helped Izenda grow their business and close deals faster as a result of several key

benefits:

Shorter Sales Cycle- Azure provides Izenda with the ability to immediately provision a new server and get a customer up and running in days. This has traditionally taken

up to six months when IT resources are constrained.

Expanded Market Segments- with Azure, Izenda can now provide a turnkey, self-service solution that customers can set up and manage on their own. This opens up the huge small business market segment with very little effort—a segment that previously could not be adequately served.

Increased Value Proposition- the combination of low cost, immediate deployment, and reduced burden on IT resources has made Izenda’s value proposition even stronger, resulting in greater sales opportunities and a better close rate.

Migration in Only One Week The Izenda team has been standardized on Microsoft products and technologies since inception so when it came time to migrate their solution onto the Azure platform, the process was seamless. “The majority of our porting was done in only one week. Our solution was already designed for multi-tenant. We were able to create a fully operational version on Internet Information Services (IIS) for Windows

Server to ensure the application would work well. Once tested, porting onto Azure was a breeze. If you follow best practices for ASP .NET development everything will transfer to Azure seamlessly,” commented Bhatia.

In addition to the rapid transfer to the cloud for Izenda, the Azure platform provides benefits for other Azure users when using Izenda services. Users of Izenda software who are already on the Azure system enjoy the same benefit of easy, seamless setup and accessing their data for reports and dashboards in real-time.

“Our customers can save up to $250,000 in

IT support and development costs every year. We’re

seeing tremendous interest in our solution

with hundreds of customers integrating

Izenda into almost 1,000 applications so

far.”

Sanjay Bhatia, Izenda CEO and Founder

“Windows Azure completes our vision of

bringing analytical ability to every

employee. We feel that business

intelligence should not solely be an IT function—it should be available

to every employee. That’s where powerful

productivity and change takes place.

Azure delivers economies of scale at

an enormously affordable cost.”

Sanjay Bhatia, Izenda President and

Founder

Izenda provides rich dashboard visuals that enhance decision-making capabilities.

Izenda provides sharing and scheduling capabilities

“Windows Azure completes our vision of bringing analytical ability to every employee. We feel that business intelligence should not solely be an IT function—it should be available to every employee. That’s where powerful productivity and change takes place. Azure delivers economies of scale at an enormously affordable cost“commented Bhatia.

About the Microsoft Windows Azure PlatformThe Windows Azure platform offers a flexible, familiar environment for developers to create cloud applications and services. With Windows Azure, you can shorten your time to market and adapt as demand for your service grows. Windows Azure offers a platform that is easily implemented alongside your current environment.

Windows Azure: operating system as an online service

Microsoft SQL Azure: fully relational database in the cloud

Windows Azure platform AppFabric: AppFabric Service Bus gives developers the flexibility to choose how their applications communicate, and to address the challenges presented by firewalls, NATs, dynamic IP, and disparate identity systems. AppFabric Access Control enables simple, secure authorization for RESTful web services that federate with a variety of identity providers.

For more information, visit www.microsoft.com/windowsazure

About Microsoft’s Software-plus-Services StrategyWhen you combine the ever-growing power of devices and the increasing ubiquity of the Web, you come up with a sum that is greater than its parts. Software-plus-Services is that greater sum. It all adds up to a commitment from Microsoft to deliver ever more compelling opportunities and solutions to consumer and business customers—and to our partners.Microsoft has vibrant businesses on the desktop and in the enterprise, and is making sizable investments in online services and devices.  As these four worlds converge, no technology vendor is better positioned to deliver on the vision of Software-plus-Services.  Microsoft has multiple ways to monetize the results through the familiar model of software licensing, offering services by subscriptions, leveraging Microsoft's industry-leading advertising platform or the growing form of micro-payments known as Microsoft Points.  And, Microsoft has the world’s largest and most diverse

partner ecosystem, which is committed to its role in our strategy.

For more information visit:http://www.microsoft.com/softwareplusservices/

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 who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. 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 Izenda products and services, call (888) 493-6321 or visit: http://www.Izenda.com

Microsoft Software and Services

Microsoft Windows Azure Platform

Microsoft Windows Server 2008

Microsoft SQL Server 2008

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Microsoft Visual Studio

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

Document published April 2010