“This was the smoothest deployment I’ve ever been part of…. The clear direction that we received at the MTC played a significant part in our planning, goal setting, and ultimate success.”

Emani Diwakar, Senior Software Engineer II, Quark

Quark, a developer of desktop publishing software, wanted to improve its Quark Promote service offering by moving it to the Windows Azure platform. The company needed to better understand the platform and the steps involved in a migration, so it attended an Architecture Design Session at a Microsoft Technology Center. Quark came away with a plan that resulted in a successful deployment that was completed three months faster than it could have achieved alone.

Business NeedsQuark has long been known for its desktop publishing software, but the company continuously strives to help customers meet their publishing challenges in new, cost-effective ways. That is why, in 2009, Quark decided to offer Quark Promote, a service that makes it easy for small businesses to create polished marketing materials by using online template sets. Customers can choose from the company’s thousands of designer business cards, brochures, letterheads, envelopes, coupons, and other materials, and customize them by using a lightweight desktop application and the Quark Promote online service.

The service proved so popular that Quark sought to expand its business model to include a hosted “white-label” offering, which printing companies could use to offer Quark Promote templates to their own customers under their own label. However, Quark could foresee that scalability would quickly become an issue.

In 2010, the company chose to move Quark Promote to the Windows Azure platform to take advantage of its inherent scalability and provide a more cost-effective service to customers. “We felt

that moving to Windows Azure would put us in a better position to bring on more white-label customers and easily scale to meet their needs,” says Dave White, Vice President of Alliances and Emerging Technology at Quark.

However, Quark was not sure about the best way to migrate its existing service to Windows Azure, especially considering that the cloud-computing platform was so new at the time, with several features yet to be released. “We knew that we wanted to move to Windows Azure,” recalls Emani Diwakar, Senior Software Engineer II at Quark. “But, in order for the transition to go smoothly, we needed to gain a clearer understanding of the platform and what technical aspects we should consider as we moved forward.”

SolutionQuark received an offer to attend an Architecture Design Session at the Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) in Chicago, Illinois, to learn more about how to migrate Quark Promote to Windows Azure. A two-member team from Quark spent two days at the MTC in August 2010. “I was excited to get in-depth, ‘under-the-hood’ information and have the chance to explore various aspects of Windows Azure

Customer: QuarkWebsite: www.quark.comCustomer Size: 400 employeesCountry or Region: United StatesIndustry: Software engineering

Customer ProfileQuark, headquartered in Denver, Colorado, is a dynamic publishing innovator that makes publishing software used to design and publish communications across a variety of media.

Software and Services Services− Microsoft Technology Centers

Windows Azure Platform− Windows Azure− Microsoft SQL Azure

Microsoft Server Product Portfolio− Microsoft SQL Server 2008

For more information about other Microsoft customer successes, please visit: www.microsoft.com/casestudies

Microsoft Technology CenterCustomer Solution Case Study

Software Developer Speeds Time-to-Market for New Service with Expert Guidance

as it specifically related to our project,” says Diwakar.

Throughout the engagement, Quark team members worked with MTC architects to get answers to questions about everything from load balancing to security concerns. They explored different options for moving on-premises applications to Windows Azure, best practices for converting data stored in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 data management software to Microsoft SQL Azure, and strategies for maintaining a hybrid environment, with some services in the cloud and others remaining on-premises.

Quark also learned how Microsoft planned to expand the Windows Azure platform, so the company could establish its own timeline for adopting different features. “The opportunity for us to learn about the road map and how to execute on it was invaluable,” says White. Additionally, the team gained insight into the security capabilities of Windows Azure to both ensure compliance with standards and allay customers’ potential security concerns.

The company came away from the MTC with a detailed plan in place for the deployment. Quark successfully launched Quark Promote on Windows Azure in December 2010 after making full use of the plan that it established at the MTC. As of April 2011, Quark Promote has been met with success, and the company plans to expand it geographically and offer it to customers who have multiple franchise stores.

BenefitsQuark brought its new service to market quickly with the right structure for long-term success, thanks in large part to its experience at the MTC. “This was the smoothest deployment I’ve ever been part of—absolutely no hiccups,” says Diwakar. “The clear direction that we received at the MTC played a significant part in our planning, goal setting, and ultimate success.” Benefits of the company’s MTC engagement include:

Better technology understanding. Quark expanded its knowledge of Windows Azure at the MTC, and it gained specific information about how to handle certain

situations. “For instance, we were shown how to structure our upgrades to avoid downtime for customers and how to use Table Storage to speed up data retrieval,” says Diwakar. “We would have eventually figured those things out on our own, but it would have taken a lot of trial and error. By working with the MTC architects ahead of time, we were able to use our knowledge to deliver a better experience for our customers.”

Faster time-to-market. The company trimmed its project timeline because of its experience at the MTC. “We deployed Quark Promote to Windows Azure at least three months sooner because of the plan that we developed at the MTC,” says Diwakar. “In doing so, we were able to quickly move our white-label customers to Windows Azure to reduce their costs, and we also could add more customers without having to invest in more hardware.”

Unique support from Microsoft. Quark appreciates the encouragement that Microsoft provided through the MTC. “With Microsoft, we receive guidance about what we want to do, based on our context, whereas other software companies’ training programs are more traditional and focus on what they want to tell us,” says White. “That distinction meant greater speed of execution and made it possible for us to skip a lot of potentially painful lessons. It’s a unique program that really made a positive difference for us.”

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Document published May 2011