TechDays 2010 Portugal - Introduction to Silverlight 4.0 16x9

Editor's Notes

• #38: Hard Rock International Creates Unique Rock ’n’ Roll Experience Online Begun as an authentic American diner in London in 1971, Hard Rock International today owns restaurants, hotels, casinos, and live venues throughout the world, as well as an unparalleled collection of rock ’n’ roll memorabilia. Hard Rock wanted to reinforce its authentic brand and role as custodian to rock ’n’ roll history by sharing its collection of memorabilia with fans. Working with Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner Vertigo and design and advertising agency Duncan/Channon, Hard Rock used Microsoft Silverlight™ 2 to create a unique Web site that serves as a shrine to all things rock. Visitors use intuitive zoom technology to navigate the collection, investigate the stories behind each piece and share their discoveries with friends. Using Microsoft products and technologies, Vertigo built a content management system and infrastructure for the site in just 30 days.SituationIn rock ’n’ roll religion, Hard Rock is a place of worship. Since its inception as an American diner in London in 1971, Hard Rock International has displayed relics of rock ’n’ roll lore and music culture for the veneration of millions of fans. The company’s more than 146 restaurants and venues, located around the world, feature genuine rock artifacts—everything from the red Fender Lead II guitar that Eric Clapton hung above his reserved table in the original Hard Rock to the handwritten lyrics of a song that Axl Rose penned for Guns N’ Roses’ breakthrough album Appetite for Destruction. Hard Rock’s Memorabilia site reinforces that our brand stands for that personal, authentic connection fans have with rock ’n’ roll music and its heroes. Sean Dee, Chief Marketing Officer, Hard Rock International To emphasize the authenticity of the company’s brand and to differentiate it from mass-market theme restaurants and hotel chains, Hard Rock hired design and advertising agency Duncan/Channon. Part of the new brand campaign involved a Web site featuring Hard Rock’s memorabilia collection, the largest and most valuable music memorabilia collection in the world. “At more than 70,000 pieces, our collection has been described as the Smithsonian of rock ’n’ roll,” says Sean Dee, Chief Marketing Officer at Hard Rock International. “But of course, this memorabilia is extremely valuable and must be handled with extreme care, so we wanted to find a more practical way to bring the collection to a broader audience around the world.” Duncan/Channon worked with the online services group and a cross-functional team of experts at Hard Rock to build a memorabilia Web site that would let fans view artifacts and read the story behind each one. The initial plans involved an HTML-based Web site with basic search capabilities and some Flash components. Each archive item would have its own page, and visitors would be able to zoom in on each item. Figure 1. The Hard Rock Memorabilia Web site. SolutionWhile the team worked on the creative aspects of the new site, Duncan/Channon’s development collaborator and Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner Vertigo suggested a new approach using Microsoft Silverlight™ 2, a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering next-generation Web experiences. “As soon as we received the beta code for Silverlight 2 and explored the Deep Zoom capabilities, we understood that this technology would radically change what was possible for the memorabilia site,” says Scott Stanfield, CEO of Vertigo.To convince colleagues at Hard Rock and Duncan/Channon, Stanfield created a presentation of 1,500 family photos using Silverlight 2 and Deep Zoom, a capability that allows users to explore collections of super-high-resolution images. The demonstration assuaged any initial skepticism about Silverlight 2.“Once we saw Deep Zoom in action, there was no longer a debate about which technology we would use,” explains Michael Lemme, Creative Director at Duncan/Channon. “Deep Zoom doesn’t just approximate the real-life experience people have at Hard Rock, it goes even further so that fans can get closer and interact with pieces in ways they couldn’t in person.”From Deep Zoom to Deep PurpleAs shown in Figure 1, the Hard Rock Memorabilia site (http://memorabilia.hardrock.com) presents visitors with a mosaic image of all the pieces in the collection—altogether an amazing 2 billion pixels in size at launch, and growing all the time.Visitors to the site can zoom in and out by using the scroll wheel on the mouse, pan the image by clicking and dragging, or quickly target a specific item by clicking it. When the visitor selects an item, historical details appear in a transparent frame, along with audio and video; links to external Web sites; and an option to share information about that item through e-mail or on a blog. To the left of the images, visitors can select filtered views of the online collection according to featured artists, type of artifact, decade, musical genre, and location, as shown in Figure 2. Once a visitor selects a view, the site rearranges the images in a quick animated sequence.“The combination of Deep Zoom and filtered views could accommodate the entire collection of 70,000 pieces. This is a new paradigm for exploring large sets of visual data—it is far more appealing than the traditional approach of thumbnails and page-based navigation,” says Lemme.Microsoft technologies ensure the system would not only perform as quickly as possible, but scale as the memorabilia collection grows to encompass all 70,000 pieces. Scott Stanfield, CEO, Vertigo Hard Rock wants to encourage greater interaction among its customers through the site. While researching the project, Duncan/Channon found that many fans Figure 2. The memorabilia site offers sophisticated navigation.already post their own images and videos of Hard Rock memorabilia on photo-sharing and video-sharing sites. “A search for ‘hard rock’ on Flickr returns 80,000 results, and many of those photos are accompanied by extensive comment threads. People are already out there talking about Hard Rock memorabilia and having discussions about the story behind particular pieces and what it meant for their favorite artists,” says Dee. “One of our primary goals with this site is to foster that type of discussion.” In coming months, Hard Rock plans to add comment features so that fans can discuss particular items through regular text comments or by posting their own related image. Hard Rock is also working on widgets that people can embed in their blogs or Web sites. These widgets will feature selected items or custom collections.Developer Jam SessionVertigo used Microsoft Visual Studio® Team System 2008 Team Suite and an early beta version of Silverlight 2 to build Hard Rock’s Memorabilia site in just 30 days. Developers worked in familiar C# code and used some JavaScript for the scroll wheel controls. “The Hard Rock Memorabilia site was the first Web site to employ Deep Zoom technology, and we collaborated closely with the Silverlight team at Microsoft on the beta technology. Today, developers that create applications for Silverlight 2 will have a wealth of resources at their disposal, including a software development kit and tools like Deep Zoom Composer,” says Mike Hanley, Engineering Director at Vertigo.To make it easier to edit and expand the online collection and enable filtered views of the collection, Vertigo made the memorabilia site data driven, or automatically composed from separate content elements instead of pieced together with custom code. Vertigo built a tool called Vertigo BigPicture™ that organizes content and collections of images. The system includes a content management system based on Windows® SharePoint® Services 3.0 and a file system for managing the 77,000 image files that comprised the initial launch of the Hard Rock Memorabilia site. Fast Facts Days to complete 30 days Image tiles 77,000 tiles Image size 2 billion pixels Project team 1 project manager, 1 designer, 6 developersDevelopment software Microsoft Visual Studio® Team System 2008 Team Suite Programming languages C#, JavaScript Programming model and technologies Microsoft Silverlight 2, Deep Zoom, Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5, Microsoft ASP.NET The memorabilia site launched with 257 items, but the company plans to eventually include thousands of pieces. To ensure optimum performance of the Web application, Vertigo employed 64-bit code on Microsoft SQL Server® 2005 and Windows Server® 2003 R2 with Internet Information Services 6.0. “While Deep Zoom in Microsoft Silverlight 2 is simple enough for enthusiasts to build applications with, we needed to make sure the Hard Rock application would scale in terms of performance and manageability as new items are added in the future,” says Hanley.BenefitsThe Hard Rock Memorabilia site helps Hard Rock International promote its unique collection of rock ’n’ roll icons and differentiate itself from mass-market venues. “Hard Rock’s Memorabilia site reinforces that our brand stands for that personal, authentic connection fans have with rock ’n’ roll music and its heroes,” says Dee.Raw, Emotive ExperienceMicrosoft Silverlight 2 and the Deep Zoom technology helped Hard Rock, Duncan/Channon, and Vertigo capture the tangible spirit of rock ’n’ roll through an online experience. “Rock ’n’ roll is about authenticity, doing something different, and expressing yourself without inhibition. Deep Zoom brings those qualities to the memorabilia site and lets people interact with these objects in a way that is both unique and natural,” says Lemme. “Deep Zoom adds another dimension beyond horizontal and vertical scrolling; now, viewers can seamlessly zoom in—extremely close—to an object or group of objects.”While most Hard Rock memorabilia is encased in glass and displayed in locations around the world, the memorabilia site lets fans interact with rare pieces and inspect details, such as handwritten lyrics and letters, as shown in Figure 3. “Microsoft Silverlight 2 revolutionizes what is possible for a site like this. It is a huge advance in terms of what we can create for our clients and their customers,” says Stanfield. “Visitors to the Hard Rock Memorabilia site can easily inspect the grain of leather on a jacket or the individual wire wraps on the E string of a guitar. You can look inside Buddy Holly’s glasses and read the inscription of the manufacturer.” Deep Zoom doesn’t just approximate the real-life experience people have at Hard Rock, it goes even further so that fans can get closer and interact with pieces in ways they couldn’t in person. Michael Lemme, Creative Director, Duncan/ChannonFamiliar, Cross-Platform DevelopmentWorking with technology still in development, the Vertigo team built the Hard Rock Memorabilia site in just 30 days, thanks to the familiar development languages and mechanisms supported in Silverlight 2. In addition, the development team did not worry about which browser visitors used because Silverlight 2 supports all major browsers, as well as the Apple Macintosh platform. Vertigo also took advantage of Microsoft server products and technologies to handle the tremendous technical challenges for the site. “At the launch, the site comprised 55 gigabits of RAW-format images, streaming videos, and 3.5 gigabits of other content—all available in a browser that runs at 30 frames per second as the viewer pans around an image with 2 billion pixels,” says Stanfield. “That’s a lot of requests back to the server. Microsoft technologies ensure the system would not only perform as quickly as possible, but scale as the memorabilia collection grows to encompass all 70,000 pieces.” Stronger Brand Affinity Figure 3. The memorabilia site lets fans inspect fine details.The Hard Rock Memorabilia site raises the profile of Hard Rock International as the custodian of rock history—and fosters the discussion and sharing of that history online. In just a few weeks after the public launch, traffic to the site has quickly risen due to word-of-mouth recommendations and favorable reviews in blogs. Upcoming commenting features and widgets that people can embed elsewhere online will continue to excite and engage the community of fans. The site’s intuitive navigation and historical details, provided by the resident Hard Rock experts, draw visitors in and foster a close connection with the Hard Rock brand. “We expect people to spend significant amounts of time on the site, poring over memorabilia and reading the stories that connect a particular piece with the music or an artist that they grew up with and love,” says Dee.
• #39: Digital Publisher Creates New Business Opportunities for Online Content Delivery Bondi Digital Publishing, based in New York City, has built a reputation for innovative, user-friendly digital content delivery. Working with Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner Vertigo, Bondi developed an innovative new Web delivery solution based on the Microsoft Silverlight™ browser plug-in. Bondi has used its new solution to build online Web archives forPlayboyand Rolling Stone magazines. These archives give consumers access to old content that might otherwise have been lost, and they provide publishers and advertisers with a new delivery model that generates new revenue streams from preexisting content. SituationBondi Digital Publishing built its reputation for innovative, user-friendly digital content delivery with its release of The Complete New Yorker on DVD in 2005. As traditional print publishers have struggled to cost-effectively move their assets online, Bondi has been working on new models for distributing printed content on the Internet in a way that makes sense for both producers and consumers. To do this, Bondi needed a delivery mechanism that could handle the technical challenges of presenting large repositories of image-based data on the Web, while simultaneously offering a robust and responsive user experience.The Web is changing the way people consume the written word. “Silverlight gave us the tools we need to effectively monetize archival publishing content and deliver a compelling user experience”. Marat Aktar          Co-founder, Bondi Digital PublishingSolutionWorking with Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner Vertigo, Bondi developed a Web delivery solution based on the Microsoft Silverlight™ browser plug-in. Bondi and Vertigo found that Silverlight offered the features they needed to create an unmatched browsing experience. “With Silverlight and its Deep Zoom technology, you can browse magazines online at the same speed you can flip physical pages,” says Bondi Co-founder David Anthony. Adds Murat Aktar, another Bondi Co-founder, “The way that Silverlight integrates with other Microsoft products meant we could build our solution on Microsoft technology from top to bottom. That makes the whole solution more solid.”BenefitsBondi has used its Silverlight-based solution to build www.playboyarchive.com, offering free digital issues of the iconic magazine. Bondi will put complete archival libraries of Rolling Stone and Playboy magazines online at www.covertocover.com during the third quarter of 2009, giving consumers the opportunity to access old content that might otherwise have been lost, and providing publishers and advertisers with a new delivery model that generates new revenue streams from preexisting content. “Traditional TV broadcast, print, and radio stations are models that have been around a long time,” notes Scott Stanfield, CEO of Vertigo. “These industries are finding ways to reinvigorate themselves with Vertigo-built solutions and Microsoft technology.”
• #40: Full Case Study : http://mscomapps/gcrpinternal/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000003864Vehicle Pricing Provider Anticipates User Needs with Interactive and Mobile Experiences Kelley Blue Book is a leading provider for new and used automobile values. The company’s Web site, kbb.com, averages 12 million visits per month. To succeed on the Web, the company needs to provide consumers with reliable, immediate access to car values in new and innovative ways, whether users are sitting in front of their PCs or want information via their mobile phones. The company’s use of Microsoft® software gives Kelley Blue Book a Web presence with which it can easily deliver the innovative experiences that customers demand—in turn, helping Kelley Blue Book differentiate itself from its competition and drive new revenues. Just as important, Kelley Blue Book can maintain a reliable Web presence with minimal costs, making it possible for the company to spend more on new product development. SituationKelley Blue Book has been a leading source of used-car values since 1926, when the company published its first Blue Book of Motor Car Values. For many years, Blue Book® guides were sold mainly to businesses, such as car dealers and financial institutions. However, with the advent of the Internet, Kelley Blue Book saw an opportunity to reach consumers, as well. Today, nearly one out of every three people in the United States who buys a new or used car visits kbb.com. The company also has business-to-business products such as KARPOWER Online®, which is used by automobile dealers and other industry participants.Since Kelley Blue Book first launched its Web site in 1995, the Internet has fueled the biggest growth in the company’s history. “For many years, our main source of revenue was car dealers, who bought our printed books,” says Justin Yaros, Executive Vice President of Product Design and Development at Kelley Blue Book. “When we first launched kbb.com, we charged $3.95 for a pricing report—but that didn’t go over very well. We pulled the plug on charging a fee for pricing reports after three weeks and began the switch to a business run like radio and television, supported by advertising and partners.”With the majority of its revenue today derived from advertising and lead generation on kbb.com, the company’s Web site is its crown jewel. Kelley Blue Book must continually work to deliver innovative new Web site capabilities and customer experiences to attract and retain users, win over advertisers, and compete for visitors with other Web sites. “Our data is syndicated to other Web sites, as well, so how users can interact with the data on kbb.com is just as important as the data itself,” says Yaros. “Consumers want instant access to car values, whether they’re just starting the research process and are sitting at home in front of their PCs or are at a car dealer and need instant information via their   mobile phone. Our internal conversations are always about the customer experience, and our focus today is all about making the site more interactive and accessible in new ways.”To retain this focus on new customer experiences, Kelley Blue Book must work to minimize the cost of running its Web site. “When it comes to my IT budget, we need operational costs to remain low,” says Yaros. “I want to spend money on developing new products that will drive additional revenues, not on keeping our existing servers up and running.”Kelley Blue Book must also ensure that its Web site delivers a consistent, reliable customer experience, even during peak traffic times. “We receive more than 12 million visits a month, so the reliability of our Web site is just as important as the accuracy of our data,” says Yaros. “If someone has a bad experience on our site, that’s likely a user that we’ve lost to the competition.”SolutionKelley Blue Book is meeting all the above business needs using Microsoft® software, including the Windows Server® 2003 operating system, Microsoft SQL Server® 2005 database management software, and the Microsoft .NET Framework. “We may be able to develop interesting products with any technology, but only Microsoft gives us what we need to run the entire business,” says Yaros. “The depth and breadth of Microsoft software—and the Windows® ecosystem—gives us a great advantage, in that we know a solution can always be found.”With our Silverlight-based client, we can approach advertising in an entirely new way. People are engaged for five to seven minutes, which becomes very attractive to advertisers. Justin YarosExecutive Vice President of Product Design and Development, Kelley Blue Book Kbb.com, the company’s “flagship” product, is based on Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0, with an upgrade to ASP.NET 3.5 in the works. The site uses Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) programming techniques to reduce the number of roundtrips required between users’ Web browsers and the Web site—in turn, leading to increased responsiveness as users interact with the content on Web pages. Software development is done using the Microsoft Visual Studio® 2008 Professional development system, and Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server is used as a source code control and build environment. “Kelley Blue Book is very much a software development company, with about half of all IT resources devoted to product development,” says Lapin. “I’m a developer at heart, and my personal opinion is that Microsoft development tools such as Visual Studio 2008 and Team Foundation Server provide a huge benefit over other platforms. Developer productivity on Windows is, without a doubt, head and shoulders above that for Linux.”Integrated IT InfrastructureThe Web servers that host kbb.com are Dell PowerEdge 1950 systems that run the 64-bit version of Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition, and each is configured with one processor and 8 gigabytes of RAM. The database servers are Dell PowerEdge 2950 systems that run 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2003 Standard or Enterprise, along with 64-bit versions of either SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition or Enterprise Edition.The kbb.com Web site and all other products are supported by a single, integrated data pipeline. Kelley Blue Book receives data on vehicle transactions from all over the United States, from many different sources, ranging from dealer management systems to Microsoft Office Excel® spreadsheets that are filled out and submitted by employees in the field. The company uses SQL Server 2005 Integration Services to transform the data and load it into a SQL Server 2005 relational database, and then uses SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services and business analytics software from SAS to analyze the data and predict residual values. Processed vehicle value data is accessed by kbb.com and the company’s other products through a service-oriented architecture that Kelley Blue Book developed using Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0. “A service-oriented architecture enables us to quickly and easily get Kelley Blue Book data from where it originates out to our many products,” says Andy Lapin, Director of Architecture for Kelley Blue Book. “And it enables all those products to access the data in a consistent manner, whether they are business-to-consumer products like kbb.com, business-to-business products like KARPOWER Online, or feeds to other Web sites that syndicate our data.”New Levels of InteractivityWith its current IT infrastructure, Kelley Blue Book can easily execute on its number-one priority: continually delivering new products and customer experiences. One recent such project was the delivery of a highly interactive “Perfect Car Finder® Photo Edition” experience on kbb.com, which the company delivered using the Microsoft Silverlight™ browser plug-in. The project was conceived in mid-2008, when Yaros’s team was having one of its frequent discussions on how the company could further differentiate kbb.com from competing Web sites.Kelley Blue Book is using Microsoft Silverlight to deliver a highly interactive user experience.“Someone had stumbled across the HardRock.com Web site, which uses the Deep Zoom technology in Silverlight 2 to let users visually explore, and we realized that we could do something similar with cars,” recalls Yaros. “Most people who come to kbb.com know the make and model of the car they want to research and go from there, primarily getting to the images of a car only after specifying it. Silverlight enabled us to support an entirely new approach in which people can view the images of many cars at once—and interactively adjust which cars are displayed based on characteristics such as body style, price, and mileage.” From an architectural perspective, the Silverlight-based client is a rich Internet application. It was built by one developer in about eight weeks, with a few hours of assistance from a designer to help with the look and feel. Deep Zoom is used to intelligently load photos of various resolutions that zoom in and out in real time as the user interacts with the slider bars and other controls in the left pane of the user interface. Support for Mobile UsersKelley Blue Book also took advantage of Microsoft software to add support for mobile users—a consumer need that is clearly growing. “We noticed that kbb.com was getting around 200,000 visits per month from mobile Web browsers,” recalls Lapin. “However, where we get an average of 14 page views per visit from desktop browsers, we were getting only 2 or 3 page views from mobile users, which made it clear that people were abandoning the experience before they found the information they wanted.”Working part-time over a four-month period, Lapin built two mobile versions of kbb.com—one for the Apple iPhone, and one for other mobile Web browsers. “As expected, I was able to reuse the existing service-oriented infrastructure we had built for delivering vehicle data to our products, and merely implement new user interfaces,” says Lapin. “We’ve since mobile-enabled one of our dealer products, and that only took two weeks.”BenefitsWith Microsoft software, Kelley Blue Book is able to successfully run its online business and remain a leader in delivering car-value data and other content on the Web. The company’s choice of software makes it easy to deliver the reliability that users expect, maintain a Web presence with minimal costs, and rapidly deliver new customer experiences that drive Web site traffic and revenues. “Part of my mandate is to ensure that we continue to innovate so that people take notice and continue to spread the word that kbb.com is the place to go for vehicle values and related content,” says Yaros. “Microsoft software enables us to do just that.”Rapid Delivery of New Web Site Capabilities and ExperiencesKelley Blue Book can rapidly deliver new experiences that enable users to interact with car-value data and other information in new ways. One such example is Perfect Car Finder Photo Edition, a user experience unlike anything offered by competing Web sites. “The Silverlight-based client has received more positive feedback than any other thing we’ve done, so we’ll definitely continue to enhance the application,” says Yaros. “We’re excited about what else we can do with it, such as providing the ability to compare two cars side by side and synchronously rotate those views. Or, we may use it to provide users with a new way to view dealer inventory, which is a big push for us in 2009. Today, on most Web sites, people are presented with an HTML-based list and have to drill in and back out of that list to explore a dealer’s inventory. With Silverlight, we could deliver a more interactive ‘on the lot’ experience.”Yaros, who has profit-and-loss responsibility for kbb.com, is also excited about the potential for a different advertising model. “Users look at a standard Web page for approximately 10 seconds, and advertisers know this,” he says. “With our Silverlight-based client, we can approach advertising in an entirely new way. People are engaged for five to seven minutes, which becomes very attractive to advertisers.”Although the customer experience delivered by the Silverlight-based client is new and innovative from a developer perspective, the technology used to deliver that experience was already familiar. “A C# developer who had never used Silverlight before was able to deliver a mockup in just two days—without learning any new skills or tools—and complete the project in less than two months,” says Lapin. “Perception among some people is that Silverlight is the Microsoft version of Adobe Flash. However, you don’t get Deep Zoom in Flash, and we could never have used Flash to do what we did in only eight weeks.”Mobile Access to Vehicle DataThrough its mobile Web sites, Kelley Blue Book is meeting user demand for anywhere, anytime access to its data. “In the past, mobile users couldn’t easily get to the information they needed and would give up after 1 or 2 page views,” says Lapin. “Today, our mobile sites receive an average of 7 to 10 page views per visit, which is proof that we’re doing a better job of meeting user needs. Mobile traffic is still a small percentage of total site traffic, but it is increasing in terms of sheer volume and percentage of total traffic. Demand is clearly there, even though we haven’t marketed our mobile capabilities much at all.”Not only are we ahead of our competition with respect to the mobile experience we’re able to deliver, but we’ve gained a new source of revenue. Justin YarosExecutive Vice President of Product Design and Development, Kelley Blue Book The new mobile sites have yielded advertising benefits, as well. “We sold advertising space for our mobile sites to one company for November and December of 2008, and already have two more advertisers lined up for 2009,” says Yaros. “Not only are we ahead of our competition with respect to the mobile experience we’re able to deliver, but we’ve gained a new source of revenue. Best of all, the investment to begin realizing that new source of revenue was very low because we were able to reuse the infrastructure we already have with very little developer effort required.” For Yaros, the fact that the company could support mobile users so well—and so easily—came as a pleasant surprise. “It’s not like we formally set out to build a mobile site,” he says. “Andy did it as time allowed and with no funding. We had wanted to provide mobile support for a while, but it had never been a priority because the right business model had never been clear, and thus, it had been difficult to muster enthusiasm within the company. However, when Andy showed me what he had built, I was thrilled. We showed it to our Director of Advertising Products, and soon after that we had our first advertiser for our new mobile sites.”Like Lapin, Yaros also points out that traffic patterns are proving the mobile sites’ usefulness to consumers. “On kbb.com, traffic peaks on Mondays,” he says. “On the mobile sites, traffic peaks on weekends, when people are out shopping for cars. So there’s clearly a demand. There’s a lot that we can do in the area of mobile support, and our IT infrastructure makes it easy. We’re really excited about the whole area.”Strong Reliability and SecurityEven as Kelley Blue Book works to deliver new customer experiences, it is able to deliver a trouble-free customer experience to millions of visitors each month. “In terms of security and reliability, everything has been really solid,” says Yaros. “We’ve never had a security incident, and I can’t remember the last time that our Web site was down. The only issues we’ve faced have been due to growing pains, such as fine-tuning performance for the Web site—an area where Microsoft Support and our technical account manager have been a great help.”Low Total Cost of OwnershipThanks to the ease of management provided by Microsoft software, Kelley Blue Book is able to minimize the total cost of ownership (TCO) for its Web site. ”By far, the largest component of TCO is labor costs,” says Lapin. “And, because our IT infrastructure is so efficient to run and support, we can spend most of our IT labor budget on new product development. Our ratio of developers to system administrators is about 10:1, yet our system administrators are able to easily stay on top of all the new products and applications we’re delivering. The Web site itself only requires two-and-a-half system administrators, and, although we’re a big user of SQL Server 2005, we’re able to run the entire company with only two database administrators.”Lapin has a similar view on software licensing costs, another (albeit smaller) component of TCO, preferring to view them in the context of the benefits provided by the software rather than in isolation. “Sure, we spend a little bit of money on software licensing costs,” says Lapin. “But when you look at our software licensing costs versus labor costs for development and operations, the amount we spend on software is laughable. The superior levels of productivity we’re able to realize with Microsoft software more than make up for any licensing costs—many, many times over. When we take a long-term view at what it takes to build good, sustainable products, the answer is clearly Microsoft software.”
• #41: Chicago, IL.-based Careerbuilder is the global leader in human capital solutions with the largest online job site in the United States. The company posts over 1 million job opportunities on its U.S. site, and currently averages more than 23 million unique visitors a month. To help its subscribers aggregate and analyze the candidates for a given position, Careerbuilder is building a new rich Internet application (RIA) called "Applicant Explorer", which is scheduled to be released later in 2009. Leveraging the rich controls of Microsoft Silverlight and the power of the Microsoft Live Search API, Applicant Explorer will enable Careerbuilder's premium subscribers to rapidly sort through over 31 million resumes, as well as millions of resumes posted on social networking Websites such as LinkedIn and Facebook. Recruiters will be able to narrow their candidate search in the Applicant Explorer application by dynamically sorting and viewing information by content type or key attributes. " Applicant Explorer is designed to provide employers with a more complete picture of an applicant, pulling information from a variety of sources to highlights skills, experience and accomplishments ," said Greg Brass,director of Profile Search at Careerbuilder. " Working with Microsoft gives us the ability to easily load, sort, filter and page data so recruiters can dynamically sift through large amounts of data quickly and easily. We expect the application will introduce a greater efficiency and depth of knowledge into the overall recruitment experience.” ."
• #43: Tata Motors is India’s largest automobile company, and one of the world’s largest manufacturers of commercial vehicles. The company’s most recent passenger model, the Tata Nano, was announced in January 2008. Nicknamed “the world’s cheapest car,” the Nano was designed to make vehicle ownership affordable for average Indian citizens. To help manage the tremendous interest in the Nano, and to help facilitate its online booking process, Tata Motors used Windows® Presentation Foundation to build and deploy an interactive, in-store user experience, featuring detailed photographs and videos of the Nano. The company took that same experience and repurposed it for the Web using the Microsoft® Silverlight™ browser plug-in. These two solutions helped generate more than 200,000 bookings for the Nano and positioned Tata Motors as a company on the leading edge of technology . Situation: India’s Tata Motors has been in business since 1945, and it is now the country’s largest automobile company, as well as the world’s fourth-largest truck manufacturer and second-largest bus manufacturer. The Mumbai-based company had revenues of U.S.$8.8 billion in 2007–2008, and it has affiliate and associate companies in the United Kingdom, South Korea, Thailand, and Spain. There are more than 4 million Tata Motors vehicles on the roads in India. The 23,000 employees at Tata Motors are guided by a mission to deliver the best products and service possible. The company is also serious about its social responsibilities, and it engages in community and social initiatives on labor and environmental standards in compliance with the United Nations Global Compact. This includes taking an active role in community development projects in rural communities near its manufacturing locations. In January 2008, Tata Motors announced the forthcoming release of its new model, the Tata Nano. The four-door, subcompact Nano is small in size, and its equally small price tag—approximately $2,500—earned worldwide attention. In a country of 1.1 billion people where only seven out of every 1,000 people own a vehicle, Tata Motors designed the Nano to help make car ownership a possibility for millions of Indian citizens who previously could not afford one. The Nano is known around India as “The People’s Car,” and its closest competitor costs nearly twice as much .  From the moment it was announced, it was clear that the demand for the Nano would be very high and would easily outpace the number of cars which would be initially available. As a result, Tata Motors needed to develop a unique method for marketing the car and taking customer orders. The company’s first decision was to institute an online booking process that enabled anyone with Web access to reserve a spot in a random drawing for the first 100,000 cars.  To make the booking process successful, Tata Motors needed to provide prospective buyers with the ability to explore and learn about  the Nano on the Web without actually seeing one in person. In addition, Tata Motors has 450 showrooms around India where people could view the car during the booking period, but actual vehicles would not be available for test drives at that time. “We knew that we needed to have an interactive Nano experience in the showrooms and on the Web site so that customers could come in and learn as much about the car as possible without actually driving it,” says saysViratKhullar, Assistant General Manager of Marketing for the Passenger Car Business Unit at Tata Motors. “We wanted to make it as close to reality as possible.” Under a very tight deadline, Tata Motors began looking for the right technology and the right partner to help realize its vision of an immersive, interactive user experience for the Nano in both the showrooms and the Web. Solution:Tata Motors executives saw another automotive Web site , which used the Microsoft® Silverlight™ 2 browser plug-in to create a robust  user experience. Tata Motors felt that Silverlight, combined with  Windows® Presentation Foundation (WPF), could help produce an innovative user experience to introduce the Nano to prospective customers. “From the highest levels, our team felt that the technology would connect well with our product,” says Khullar. “And choosing Microsoft products as our technology platform gave us a lot of confidence that the final product would mirror the engineering innovation that has gone into the Nano.” Tata Motors chose Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Vectorform to develop the new site. With offices in the United States, Germany, and Hyderabad, India, Vectorform specializes in the creation of inspired  user experiences for emerging technologies and multimedia platforms. The initial focus on development  was the in-showroom experience, which was  based on Windows Presentation Foundation, a unified programming model for building rich user experiences that incorporate user interface, media, and documents.  The online version followed closely behind. “Our first objective was to develop a technology platform to assist the customer who comes to our showroom,” says Khullar. “But because we had an online booking program as well, we wanted to replicate the same experience on the Web. The only change we made was to slim down the media in the online version so it would work well for users with bandwidth limitations.” Both the in-store and online experiences offer customers the ability to explore the Nano’s features in great detail. Customers can zoom in and study all parts of the car, including a 360-degree interactive view of the car’s exterior. Visitors also have access to forms and brochures that they can examine using the Deep Zoom feature, which provides the ability to interactively view high-resolution images in Silverlight. The in-store version has an auto-play feature that continuously displays high-quality videos and slides on large LCD screens in the Tata Motors showrooms.  The design work for the new solutions took place at the Vectorform U.S. office while implementation happened at the India office . And because Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation share a common Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) back end, and they both work with the Microsoft Visual Studio ® development system, Tata Motors was able to deliver multiple builds in a very short time. “Our U.S. office delivered the XAML for the interface, and we could easily incorporate it into both solutions. The reusability of the code was a key to our success,” says Vijay Madhira, Project Manager at Vectorform. Adds Imran Ahmed Shaik, Lead Developer at Vectorform, “The interoperability of Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation, and their integration with the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5, made development very straightforward. We can use the same tools and technologies to deliver for multiple platforms.” The ease of developing simultaneously for Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation made it simple and cost effective to produce both the online and offline  versions of the Nano application. “The decision to deploy an identical experience online was assisted by the fact that it came at almost no extra cost,” notes Nitin Seth, Head of Car Product Group for the Passenger Car Business Unit at Tata Motors. “There was very little we needed to change to make the in-store experience into an online experience.” Development for both the in-store and online  application took only 15 days. “Our experience with Vectorform was very good,” says Khullar. “There were many changes made during the development period—I think we went through eight iterations in 10 days—and Vectorform was very responsive. The final product that was delivered to us was exactly what we expected.” Given the high interest in the Nano, Tata Motors needed to ensure that the interactive Web site would perform well during periods of extremely high traffic, and that traffic to the interactive microsite would not compromise the main Tata Motors Web site or the main Tata Nano site. The company enlisted the help of Netmagic , India’s leading managed service provider, to host the new site separately at http://experience.tatanano.com. Netmagic runs the site on a Windows-based server  with Microsoft SQL Server® data management software and an Internet Information Services (IIS) Web server. “Netmagic chose a Microsoft platform because they could configure it to scale up and scale down, depending on traffic, to keep costs under control,” says Tanmay Shah, Divisional Manager of Marketing for the Passenger Car Business Unit at Tata Motors. “The hosting budget was not high, and they absolutely delivered. They were able to upload and go live in a matter of a couple of hours. They kept things up and running, and that was great.” With development completed, Tata Motors needed to distribute the interactive application to all 450 dealerships and make sure that the dealers could easily manage it. The system was designed to be easy to use, and the company developed simple, straightforward documentation to accompany the installation CDs. “We were very nervous about the implementation and the actual installation of the in-store experience in towns and cities all across India,” says Khullar. “But there was no problem at all. It went very, very smoothly.” Overall, Tata Motors has been very pleased with the technologies it chose for the Nano project, and it plans to use them again. “Given the constraints we had, I think the product we delivered was phenomenal,” says Seth. “Microsoft gave us the right technology at the right time and the right cost. We definitely want to use this sort of experience to help market our existing cars and the new cars we’ll roll out in the future. It’s a great way to give customers an understanding of our products.” Benefits:Tata Motors made a promise to the Indian people to produce an affordable car and make it available throughout the country. The company was able to cost effectively reach millions of interested people through an innovative in-store display system and an immersive interactive Web site . By choosing flexible and easily integrated technologies for development, Tata Motors completed the project successfully under tight deadlines. “Our chairman made a promise to the Indian people that we would deliver this car at an affordable price,” says Khullar. “Keeping that promise challenged our engineers and challenged our manufacturing processes, but through innovation and creativity, we were able to deliver on that promise.”  Rapid and Cost-effective DevelopmentThe choice of two easily integrated technologies like  Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation made it possible for Tata Motors and Vectorform to complete the entire user experience project extremely quickly. “It would be hard to imagine a bigger challenge than we faced: to build the entire user experience for the Web and the showrooms, and then get it online and in the dealerships, all in two weeks,” says Khullar. “By using Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation, I believe we got the optimum result.” The technology platform made economic sense for Tata Motors as well. “It was very, very cost effective, there is no doubt about that,” says Rajiv Dubey, Chief Operating Officer for Tata Motors. “Cost was one of our major concerns when we entered the project, and working with Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation made it possible to deliver a superior result at a reasonable price. We will definitely use this platform again in the future.” Enhanced Brand Image Being the first automobile company to put this sort of experience online and in showrooms has not only helped Tata Motors successfully launch the Nano, it has also helped to enhance the company’s brand image. “The seamless user experience in the showrooms and on the Web has definitely enhanced the Tata Nano brand, and the overall Tata Motors brand as well,” says Khullar. “The feel of the user experience is very modern, and coupled with the innovative engineering of the Nano, it shows that Tata Motors is a creative company at the leading edge of technology.” Wide Audience ReachBy duplicating the in-showroom application on the Web, Tata Motors was able to bring the Nano to anyone with an Internet connection—not just in India, but worldwide. The Tata Nano Web site received more than 30 million hits between the March 23, 2009, launch date and the close of the booking period on April 25, 2009, and the company received more than 203,000 fully paid reservations during that period .  “We chose Microsoft technologies to provide our customers with an experience as close as possible to touching a real car,” says Seth. “For us, the key value proposition was the ability to deliver this highly unique experience with low investment and extremely short turnaround time. This has proven to be a highly cost-effective means of reaching out to a larger potential customer base and taking the Nano experience to the people.”   Increased Customer Interest Interest for the Nano exceeded the company’s initial expectations. “We had 1.5 million people walk into our showrooms during the 15 days of the booking program,” says Khullar. “That is at least 10 times our regular numbers. Not everyone wanted to book a car, but they all wanted to see it and experience it.” Having this kind of experience for customers who walked in to investigate the Nano was very well received across the country, by customers and dealers. “It solved the problem we had of cars not being available for test drives, and it gave the maximum number of people the opportunity to experience the car,” says Khullar. “The dealers have said it was an excellent tool to help explain the features of the Nano. Based on their feedback, having the interactive experience in place definitely enhanced the number of bookings.” Sidebar Information[Please note that the information in the following sections will be presented in sidebar format and have strict character count limitations.] Partner Details:VectorformPhone: (###) ### - #### www.vectorform.com Customer Details:Tata MotorsPhone: (###) ### - #### www.tatamotors.com Template Type:Silverlight CountryIndia IndustryManufacturing—Automotive, farm, and recreational vehicles Customer Profile (200 Character Limit – with spaces)Mumbai-based Tata Motors is India’s largest car company, with revenues of U.S.$8.8 billion in 2007–2008. The company has 23,000 employees and has sold more than 4 million cars in India. Business Situation (200 Character Limit – with spaces)To successfully introduce its new vehicle, the Tata Nano, to prospective buyers, Tata Motors wanted to create an immersive user experience for the Web and for dealerships. Solution (200 Character Limit – with spaces)In partnership with Vectorform, Tata Motors created an in-store application based on Windows® Presentation Foundation and an interactive Web site built with Microsoft® Silverlight™ browser plug-in. Benefits (Try to keep to one line): Rapid and Cost-effective DevelopmentEnhanced Brand Image Wide Audience ReachIncreased Customer Interest  PartnersVectorformNetmagic  Product Solution ItemsMicrosoft Visual StudioMicrosoft Server Product PortfolioWindows ServerMicrosoft SQL Server TechnologyMicrosoft Silverlight 2Windows Presentation FoundationMicrosoft .NET Framework 3.5Internet Information Services Introduction Quote (extracted from text – 200 Character Limit – with spaces)“Working with Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation made it possible to deliver a superior result at a reasonable price. We will definitely use this platform again in the future.” Introduction Quote CreditRajiv Dubey, Chief Operating Officer, Tata Motors Quote 2 (200 Character Limit – with spaces):“Choosing Microsoft products as our technology platform gave us a lot of confidence that the user experience would mirror the engineering innovation that has gone into the Nano.” Quote 2 CreditViratKhullar, Assistant General Manager of Marketing, Passenger Car Business Unit, Tata Motors  Quote 3 (200 Character Limit – with spaces):“This has proven to be a highly cost-effective means of reaching out to a larger potential customer base and taking the Nano experience to the people.” Quote 3 CreditNitin Seth, Head of Car Product Group, Passenger Car Business Unit, Tata Motors  Quote 4 (200 Character Limit – with spaces):“The interoperability of Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation, and their integration with the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5, made development very straightforward. We can use the same tools and technologies to deliver for multiple platforms.” Quote 4 CreditImran Ahmed Shaik, Lead Developer, Vectorform  This seems like a passive way to describe what they did, like they just fell into doing it by accident. Talking to Gretchen it’s more joined up than that and leverages a joined up user experience continuum created starting from Silverlight on the Web and seamlessly through to the full-on experience with WPF at the dealership. Please can we talk about Silverlight & Web first and then lead into WPF/desktop – that’s our strategy going forward. I know they developed the WPF bit first but lets look at what they ended up with and the order of customer interaction The statistics in this section nare from   http://climate.weather.com/articles/cheapcar011108.html Need to use the word ‘experience’ here Can we say who – Renault? Wrong word. User experiences should be ‘compelling’ or ‘exciting’, ‘amazing’, ‘high quality’, ‘engrossing’, ‘attention-grabbing’etc Just say ‘and’ Inspiring or inspirational delete delete not our official messaging. delete Did Silverlight/WPF/Visual Studio help make this distributed development work easier/faster/better? REVIEW: Can we find out what version of Visual Studio that was used for this project? Vague – use ‘Web’ and ‘Desktop’ or ‘in-store’ Consistency…always use ‘Web’ and ‘in-store’ REVIEW: Is Netmagic a Microsoft Certified Partner? It wasn’t clear from their web site, and it makes a difference for how they are referenced in the case study.REVIEW:  Would it be possible to find out what version of Windows server, SQL Server, and IIS they used at Netmagic? Web experience Does this have anything to do with the technology? Delete. The are the actual technologies no just something ‘like’ them. These statistics from Tata press release May 4, 2009. JATIN: in our Tata interview, you said you’d be able to find out from Netmagic what the traffic to just the Silverlight portion of the site was during this time. Is that still possible? These stats need to pop right at the top of the case study. We need to show that a huge brand with massive Web reach is willing to use Silverlight on their public website without being concerned whether people already have the plug-in This quote from MS press release. This is key, why bury it at the end of the case study, it should pop at the top. Same comment, why do we bury the headline at the end of the case study? Most people wouldn’t read this far if they haven’t ‘got’ the benefit from the get-go  We need an appropriate phone number to use for the case study. We need an appropriate phone number to use for the case study. REVIEW: Note, Netmagic gets a mention in the sidebar only if they are an MS certified partner (see earlier comment).
• #88: Need to sort build