Solution Provider Uses Cloud Technology to Create Novel Social Networking Software Overview Country or Region: United States Industry: Professional services – IT services Customer Profile Synteractive is a Washington, D.C.– based IT solutions provider that focuses on customers in the public sector. Business Situation Synteractive needed a technology platform on which to implement its new idea: a social networking application for large public organizations and political campaigns that can quickly scale to millions of users. Solution The company used the Windows Azure cloud computing platform and Microsoft TownHall technology to create its SocialRally social networking software. Benefits Delivers social networking for large audiences Provides enterprise-scale platform and tools Supports innovation for competitive advantage "Windows Azure and Microsoft TownHall give us a platform that lets our customers launch a multitude of forums and complex web applications and handle spikes in demand of up to millions of users.” Evan Burfield, Chief Executive Officer, Synteractive Synteractive is a Washington, D.C.–based strategy and business solution provider with expertise in public sector projects, including the Obama administration’s Recovery.gov web initiative. Synteractive saw a market opportunity for social networking software that could be used to interact with very large audiences. It designed such an application, which it called SocialRally , by using the Windows Azure platform and Microsoft TownHall social networking technology. The solution, which offers a standards-friendly website, also works with Windows Phone 7 and other mobile devices. SocialRally is a highly scalable, cost-effective application that provides organizations with rich channels for interacting with and receiving real-time feedback from very large user audiences and that has broad private- and public-sector appeal.
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Solution Provider Uses Cloud Technology to Create Novel Social Networking Software
OverviewCountry or Region: United States
Industry: Professional services – IT services
Customer ProfileSynteractive is a Washington, D.C.–based IT solutions provider that focuses on customers in the public sector.
Business SituationSynteractive needed a technology platform on which to implement its new idea: a social networking application for large public organizations and political campaigns that can quickly scale to millions of users.
SolutionThe company used the Windows Azure cloud computing platform and Microsoft TownHall technology to create its SocialRally social networking software.
Benefits Delivers social networking for large
audiences Provides enterprise-scale platform and
tools Supports innovation for competitive
advantage
"Windows Azure and Microsoft TownHall give us a platform that lets our customers launch a multitude of forums and complex web applications and handle spikes in demand of up to millions of users.”
Synteractive is a Washington, D.C.–based strategy and business solution provider with expertise in public sector projects, including the Obama administration’s Recovery.gov web initiative. Synteractive saw a market opportunity for social networking software that could be used to interact with very large audiences. It designed such an application, which it called SocialRally, by using the Windows Azure platform and Microsoft TownHall social networking technology. The solution, which offers a standards-friendly website, also works with Windows Phone 7 and other mobile devices. SocialRally is a highly scalable, cost-effective application that provides organizations with rich channels for interacting with and receiving real-time feedback from very large user audiences and that has broad private- and public-sector appeal.
SituationSynteractive is a strategy and solutions firm that helps organizations tackle issues related to how people communicate with each other and how they find, access, and use information. One of the major markets for Synteractive, which is headquartered in Washington, D.C., is the public sector. The company has had significant wins in this market, including projects with the White House and Recovery.gov, a web initiative designed to provide the public with information related to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
During the course of these projects, Synteractive identified a need in the market for social interaction solutions that could help private and public sector organizations alike to better communicate with their audiences and track existing social networking outlets.
“The key problems that our customers face are those of being limited to one social network, or having to deal with one social media channel after another, as separate entities, instead of being able to deal with them all from a centralized location,” says Erren Lester, Director of Product Management for Synteractive.
Since many organizations have strict data retention and privacy mandates, however, any solution that would centralize communication would have to support records management, audit trails, and other types of requirements typically found in large enterprises.
“We looked at the market and realized that, while there were lots of little cool
solutions, like TweetDeck and stuff for bloggers and startup companies, there weren’t any good social interaction solutions for large enterprises,” says Evan Burfield, Chief Executive Officer of Synteractive.
From a technology perspective, Synteractive would have to address a number of other challenges. Any solution would have to be highly scalable to accommodate large numbers of concurrent users and big spikes in traffic. It also would have to be built on a cost-effective platform to make the solution attractive to potential clients. And, it would need to provide a rich development environment so that Synteractive could continue to innovate in response to market demands.
SolutionTo aid enterprises in the management of social networking activities, Synteractive developed a new Software-as-a-Service application called SocialRally. Built on the Windows Azure platform, an Internet-scale cloud computing services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, and Microsoft TownHall, a freely downloadable and open code base that works with Windows Azure, SocialRally provides the ability for organizations to enable public conversations and debates and provide a common user experience and across a broad range of mobile devices, including the Windows Phone 7, iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry smartphones.
Shawn Hinsey, Chief Software Architect for Synteractive, says the Windows Azure platform and TownHall provided the
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“The key problems that our customers face are those of being limited to one social network, or having to deal with one social media channel after another, as separate entities, instead of being able to deal with them all from a centralized location.”
Erren Lester, Director of Product Management, Synteractive
important technology components needed to bring SocialRally to fruition. The Windows Azure platform includes a cloud services operating system and a set of developer services. Windows Azure, Microsoft SQL Azure, and Microsoft .NET Services are the key components of the Windows Azure platform.
“We built SocialRally to take advantage of key features of the Windows Azure platform such as the compute clusters and Microsoft SQL Azure, which, respectively, provide enormous scalability and database capabilities, and TownHall, which provided the free and open code for executing our ideas,” says Hinsey.
SocialRally helps institutions connect and stay in closer touch with their customers or constituents by providing interactive, community-driven sites around specific topics; public, online forums; and the ability track, monitor, and engage in group conversations from a single user interface. SocialRally has appeal to industries across the spectrum, from political candidates and government entities, to retail and financial services in the private sector. The solution includes all-important security features, such as protection for personally identifiable information, and uses a self-policing feature that allows the user community to quickly identify and isolate offensive or otherwise inappropriate behaviors and language.
Not least of all, the solution is designed so that organizations can set it up in minutes without the need for in-house
development expertise. SocialRally includes features such as dashboards and analytical tools, and can be integrated with an organization’s Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 intranet software. It also integrates with the Facebook social networking website as well as LinkedIn, Digg, Twitter, Delicious, MySpace, and more.
Because SocialRally is based on the Windows Azure cloud-computing platform, it is extremely scalable and can handle huge spikes in user traffic. Synteractive is taking advantage of the pay-as-you-go business model of Windows Azure to price its solution, so organizations pay only for the storage and computing power that they need to run SocialRally efficiently. Says Burfield, “For our business, the cloud provides incredible marginal cost. We didn’t have to go out and retain data centers, implement complex architectures, and hire systems administrators. We just pull resources as we need using the scalable, pay-as-you-go model.”
BenefitsBuilding its SocialRally application on the Windows Azure platform helped Synteractive create a compelling product that organizations can use to easily create social networking sites with forums, feedback tools, and other features that bolster communications. Behind the scenes, Windows Azure and Microsoft TownHall provide a rich, adaptable cloud computing platform that cost-effectively scales to meet the needs of very large networking initiatives.
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“For our business, the cloud provides incredible marginal cost. We didn’t have to go out and retain data centers, implement complex architectures, and hire systems administrators. We just pull resources as we need using the scalable, pay-as-you-go model.”
Synteractive is taking advantage of the Microsoft cloud platform to demonstrate innovative work in a highly competitive marketplace. Furthermore, Synteractive customers can be confident that the solution is founded on a solid infrastructure with ISO accreditation and SAS attestations. Says Lester, “Microsoft has a lot of experience in terms of building extremely large, highly scalable platforms that scale to handle up to hundreds of millions of users.”
Delivers Social Networking for Large AudiencesBy using the Windows Azure platform, Synteractive was able to develop a solution that met the challenges set out by important Synteractive customers.
“The world is changing. The way that an organization goes out and engages with an ecosystem—from 50 people to 50 million people—is fundamentally different than in the past,” says Burfield. “You don’t go out and buy big buildings and create command-and-control hierarchies and managers upon managers. You start a conversation. You let that conversation grow organically and virally, and you have a personalized connection with almost everyone. SocialRally and what we’re doing with the Microsoft TownHall technology are designed to bring innovation—in terms of crowd sourcing and having a conversation—to large organizations, in a way that fits with their requirements.”
He notes that the Microsoft technology also made it easy to add features sought by Synteractive customers, such as a polling feature and ways to push
multimedia content to specific users. Additional functionality that appealed to Synteractive is the reputation-based system in TownHall, which encourages members to participate in the community forum by voting on questions and posting responses, and which rewards forum members with “reputation points.”
“Plus, users can access SocialRally regardless of their browser, and can use it from mobile devices such as the Windows Phone 7,” Burfield says. “The Microsoft technology has been a huge accelerator for us.”
Even in its infancy, the solution has been extremely well received. Says Lester, “Community members have told us that they really enjoy using the TownHall interface because of the rich user experience that it provides instead of static, text-based links. Rich visuals and graphics can be integrated into the forum, making it really engaging and fun to use, which allows individuals to have a real voice in the community.”
Provides Enterprise-Scale Platform and ToolsWindows Azure and Microsoft TownHall provided an enterprise-scale platform while delivering the cost effectiveness of cloud-based computing for both the development and ongoing implementation of SocialRally.
“For us, there wasn’t really a decision whether or not to move to the cloud. It was obvious,” says Burfield. “Our business model is a ‘freemium’ one: We offer SocialRally as a free service for a
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“We were really impressed with the experience of developing with SQL Azure, because we could take our existing development infrastructure and simply layer it on top of that.”Shawn Hinsey, Chief Software Architect,
Synteractive
small business or an individual, or perhaps for a large enterprise that wants to dip its toe into social networks. But we also have the ability to scale SocialRally all the way up to the largest enterprises. Windows Azure and Microsoft TownHall give us a platform that lets our customers launch a multitude of forums and complex web applications and handle spikes in demand of up to millions of users.”
Hinsey says the pay-as-you-go model, the immense scalability, and the rich development environment of the Windows Azure platform were all critical to the development of SocialRally.“We were really impressed with the experience of developing with SQL Azure, because we could take our existing development infrastructure and simply layer it on top of that,” Hinsey says. “We could take an application previously developed on [Microsoft] SQL Server 2008 R2, and then deploy it into the cloud on SQL Azure without any problems at all. It was a completely seamless transition.”
Integration with other software, including SharePoint Server 2010 and the Windows Phone OS 7, was also key to the design of SocialRally. “SharePoint 2010 is providing really exciting new capabilities for social engagement inside the enterprise and as a web content management platform for engaging an even broader audience outside the enterprise,” says Burfield. “And, by leveraging the Microsoft TownHall code base within SocialRally, we’re able to extend into mobile devices like the
Windows Phone 7 and can integrate with Facebook.”
Supports Innovation for Competitive AdvantageSynteractive used Microsoft technologies to create a versatile, cloud-based application for a large market that is still in the nascent stages of using social networking software.
“One of the most powerful aspects of the Windows Azure platform is its ability to reduce our time-to-market,” says Hinsey. “This means that when we come up with an innovative new idea in which time might be critical, such as SocialRally, we have the ability and tools to take care of that idea, release it into the public quickly, and immediately get feedback on it.”
Burfield adds that the Windows Azure platform has given Synteractive a highly flexible and cost-effective means to address emerging market needs.“What Windows Azure provides is essentially a fully marginalized cost. We have no fixed costs, and we have no capital costs related to SocialRally,” he says. “We’re only paying for exactly what we’re using. So we can contain our costs for a free service, and we can scale the cost up as we need to in order to provide a premium enterprise service to our large customers.”
He adds that the company has worked with a number of cloud computing providers, including Amazon. “They all have their strengths,” Burfield says. “But where Windows Azure really stands above is when you want to create that
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“One of the most powerful aspects of the Windows Azure platform is its ability to reduce our time-to-market."Shawn Hinsey, Chief Software Architect,
Synteractive
rapid, highly scalable, flexible web application. Windows Azure deals with all the complexity, allowing you to focus on creativity and the business processes that provide a competitive advantage in the marketplace.”
Related Resources and InformationTo learn more about the Windows Azure platform, visit the website at: www.windowsazure.com Learn: Channel9 Windows Azure Training CourseRead: Security Best Practices for Developing on the Windows Azure PlatformDownload: Windows Azure Training KitDownload: Windows Azure SDK
To learn more about Microsoft’s TownHall social networking technology, visit http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/TownHallFollow: @mstownhall on Twitter to be kept up to date on the latest TownHall news Watch: Demonstration videos at http://www.youtube.com/mstownhall . Download: Microsoft’s TownHall Core API source code and the web client
More about Synteractive’s SocialRally, software-as-a-service application, can be found here:
http://www.synteractive.com/Markets/socialrally/
Microsoft Cloud Services Microsoft offers a complete set of cloud-based solutions to meet business needs, including solutions for advertising, communications (email, meetings), collaboration (document storage, sharing, workflow), business applications (customer resource management, business productivity), data storage and management, and infrastructure services. In addition, customers can take advantage of an entire ecosystem of solution providers and Microsoft partners.
For more information about Microsoft Cloud Services, go to: www.microsoft.com/cloud
Windows Azure PlatformThe Windows Azure platform provides an excellent foundation for expanding online product and service offerings. The main components include: Windows Azure. Windows Azure is the development, service hosting, and service management environment for the Windows Azure platform. Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute and
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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 web, go to www.microsoft.com
For more information about Synteractive, call (202) 904-2165 or visit the web site at: www.synteractive.com
To view the video documentation of Synteractive and other success stories visit the Microsoft Success Web site at: www.microsoft.com/business/success/
See how other companies successfully implemented money and time saving solutions in their business using the Windows Azure platform. View an additional case study here.
Software and Services Windows Azure Platform− Windows Azure− Microsoft SQL Azure− Microsoft TownHall
Microsoft Visual Studio Microsoft Visual Studio 2008
Professional Edition
Microsoft Server Product Portfolio− Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010
Windows Phone 7 Technologies− Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5
storage to host, scale, and manage web applications on the Internet through Microsoft data centers.Microsoft SQL Azure. Microsoft SQL Azure offers the first cloud-based relational and self-managed database service built on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 technologies.Windows Azure AppFabric. With Windows Azure AppFabric, developers can build and manage applications more easily both on-premises and in the cloud.−AppFabric Service Bus connects services and applications across network boundaries to help developers build distributed applications.−AppFabric Access Control provides federated, claims-based access control for REST web services.Windows Azure Marketplace DataMarket. Developers and information workers can use the new service DataMarket to easily discover, purchase, and manage premium data subscriptions in the Windows Azure platform.
