1. E-Distribution Service uses Cloud Infrastructure to Reduce Costs, Gain Flexibility, and Expand Globally
“Windows Azure helps makes it simple, fast, and cost-effective to increase our capacity to meet demand, introduce Atomblock in new countries, or even roll out new features.”
– Hendrik van Iterson, Cofounder and CTO, ALSO Digital
WINDOWS AZURE CSV:
WEBSITE: LOCATION: Netherlands
ORG SIZE: 10 employees
INDUSTRY: IT services—software and services
WINDOWS AZURE CSV PROFILE:
ALSO Digital helps game publishers, software vendors, and retailers reach more markets online and sell products on a global scale. The company is a division of ALSO, one of the largest ICT distribution companies in Europe, with yearly net sales of more than US$8.3 billion.
SITUATION:
ALSO Digital launched its Atomblock e-distribution service on its own virtual-server environment, but high infrastructure costs made it difficult to get the stability and capacity the service needed or the flexibility to scale quickly in response to customer demand. As a distributor for some of the largest online publishers of software and games, ALSO Digital needed a robust, scalable, global, and cost-effective computing environment, and the company knew it could build it with cloud technology.
SOLUTION:
ALSO Digital worked with the Microsoft BizSpark Plus program and the Windows Azure team to migrate the Atomblock architecture to Windows Azure. Atomblock runs on Windows Azure web roles and stores data using Windows Azure SQL Database and Windows Azure Blob services. If necessary, the e-distribution service can scale up Windows Azure processing nodes within 20 minutes. ALSO Digital uses the Windows Azure Content Delivery Network and Traffic Manager to deliver high-bandwidth content and distribute demand to the best performing data center.
BENEFITS:
Easy, fast, and cost-effective to increase capacity, introduce services in new areas, or roll out new features
Accelerated time-to-market, reduced costs, grew from startup to success in less than two years
The opportunity to think big—worldwide expansion supported by a stable, scalable, reliable Windows Azure environment
WINDOWS AZURE CASE STUDY