The Answer May Surprise You

By now, everyone knows that Microsoft server technologies run at scale. Some of the world’s largest SAP implementations run on Windows and SQL Server database. But did you know that the most widely discussed Internet cultural phenomenon of the last several years is a pure Microsoft shop? In fact, it’s a great example of the largest online software-as-a service (SaaS) offering built on the Microsoft platform. This particular startup has gone from zero to 100 million users in three years. Unless your name is Rip Van Winkle, you have heard of this site. It’s called MySpace. A year ago, this social networking site passed Google in terms of traffic and now ranks second behind Yahoo in page views with one billion daily. More than 260,000 users sign up every day — it now hosts a staggering 430 million user images.

Getting SaaS-Y with MySpace

What’s the Microsoft connection? Since day one, our platform, applications, and development infrastructure have been the foundation of MySpace’s infrastructure. MySpace is using everything from SQL Server to .NET to Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) to Windows Server and Windows Vista operating systems, and our new Atlas framework. While speaking as part of Bill Gate’s talk at MIX 06, MySpace’s CTO Aber Whitcomb said, “The Microsoft platform and especially the Atlas framework and the capabilities of Windows Vista are helping us create innovative new features that empower our members’ creativity and give MySpace a ‘stickiness’ that Web sites alone can’t match.”

This is just one example of how we’re focused on delivering the best platform for any startup that wants to build a great SaaS solution. What we’re doing with ExactTarget, Inrix, Lathian, NewsGator, Echopass, Digipede, and more — might just surprise you too.

ExactTarget: Targeting SaaS — at Scale and Fast.

Take on demand email marketing company ExactTarget. The company manages more than four terabytes of client data in a transaction-heavy environment – more than 5,000 requests per minute and over 200 million new records added every day. Repeat. 200 million every day. At the heart of ExactTarget’s hosted services is SQL Server — its scalable, multi-tenant, shared services architecture serving ExactTarget’s 5,000 customers, handling mission-critical e-mail communications 24/7. ExactTarget relies on Microsoft .NET, Visual Studio, ASP.NET and Visual C# to enable its developers to quickly create the intuitive tools they offer their clients.

“We’re a Microsoft shop for three reasons,” says Scott McCorkle, vice president of technology & product at ExactTarget. “First, Microsoft’s development tools help our people be far more productive than any other technologies. Second, there’s always a large pool of people trained in Microsoft technologies, so it’s easier to hire the talented developers we need. Finally, Microsoft technologies work well together, from top to bottom.” Read the full story.

Inrix: Traffic in the Billions.

Another Microsoft SaaS company, Inrix, provides real-time, predictive traffic services and analysis. Traffic as in cars, not Web sites. By leveraging the strength of Microsoft’s server platform, Inrix processes and analyzes billions of traffic-related data points to “literally predict the future”. The company uses Bayesian analysis, a specialized statistical technique. Researchers at Microsoft, for example, use this technique to improve accuracy of spam filters and to analyze traffic patterns in Seattle. The traffic technology was licensed exclusively to Inrix through our IP Ventures program. Read the full story.

NewsGator: A Blogger’s Best Friend.

When NewsGator, the leading RSS platform company, was founded almost four years ago, it was built around the idea that the most efficient way for busy professionals to consume RSS feeds (news, podcasts, etc.) would be through a folder in Outlook—where they already did much of their work. By leveraging Microsoft technologies such as the Microsoft .NET Framework, Microsoft Windows Server2003, and Microsoft SQL Server, NewsGator was able to create its robust RSS platform in less time — speeding time-to-market by nearly 35 percent. Today, NewsGator creates RSS aggregation solutions for individual end users, enterprises, publishers, and other online content providers. Its online service, NewsGator Online, has more than one million feeds in its index and archives more than one million articles per hour during peak times. Its platform receives nearly 10 million API requests on an average day and nearly a million users are signed up for its consumer products. Ten of the Fortune 100 companies are now using its enterprise RSS aggregation and distribution platform, called NewsGator Enterprise Server, which will also be released as an on-demand service later this year. Read the full story.

Lathian: Online Sales and Marketing Tools for Pharma

Marketing pharmaceuticals or medical devices is a complicated job compared to, say, selling packaged foods. Lathian Systems offers life sciences companies an integrated, full-service range of online sales and marketing tools that help them improve customer relationships and make learning about these products more convenient for busy physicians. Why did they choose Microsoft? Matt Moore, VP of Technology: “First, because of their proven reliability. Second, because it’s an easy platform to develop on. And third, its low cost of ownership. We knew that we could get our technologies developed sooner – and better – on this platform than on anything else we looked at.” Read the full story.

Echopass: Making Customer Service Always On and End-to-End

Echopass is another company that is using the Microsoft platform as a foundation for its hosted call center on-demand solutions. It is now delivering end-to-end customer contact solutions for clients across a range of industries at a fraction of the cost and with far greater flexibility than traditional solutions. The cost to equip a premise-based call center ranges between $10,000 and $15,000 per agent. With Echopass, the cost is just $250 per agent per month. Read more here.

Digipede: Providing the ‘Picks and Shovels’ for SaaS

Digipede is providing a key technology for anyone providing SaaS on the Microsoft platform. Its distributed computing solution (build on the .NET platform) sets out to solve an age-old problem in information technology — the need for greater application performance. Unlike Linux-based solutions, Digipede’s is extremely easy to set up and manage. The Digipede Network can scale out .NET applications over a grid of machines. It effectively takes scalability off the table as an issue, so that the SaaS provider can focus on functionality, rather than spending their own development resources on the distributing computing ‘plumbing’ required. Their strategy seems to be paying off: As of September 2006, Digipede had snagged 18 paying grid-computing customers. They are in production with two SaaS customers: a bioinformatics Web service and an on-demand report generation service. Explains CEO John Powers, “Microsoft wants to bring high-performance computing to the masses and we’re helping them do that.”

Those are just some of the things that SaaS companies are saying about us and how we’re helping them. Most of these are in our SaaS Lighthouse program. And there is much more to come. There are lots of ways we are playing in this market. Just to point out a few:

Microsoft’s SaaS Licensing for Hosters and ISVs

Microsoft offers a monthly subscription-based licensing model, called a Service Provider License Agreement (SPLA), that is affordable and easy to sign up for. It removes the investment risk of moving to a hosted model with a pay-as-you-go pricing model, mapped to the number of your online users. For hosted service providers, the solution helps enable them to build environments that are operationally efficient and highly scalable for delivering software as a service. Thus, if you start with our stuff and host it yourself, as you grow you can easily step up to expert hosters who really know how to make our software hum. One hoster, OpSource, is providing on-demand services for software-on-demand on our platform, and Rackspace is providing enterprise-level Web infrastructure, managed hosting services, and what it calls “fanatical support” to businesses of all sizes.

Cool Languages for Microsoft SaaS

We’ve always had an open model for new languages to appear in the .NET framework. What that means is that there is no limit to the languages you may find on our platform.

Do you like Python? We have it. IronPython 1.0 is our implementation of the Python dynamic programming language on the .NET platform. Says Jim Hugunin, creator of Jython and IronPython lead developer, “The chance to make changes into .NET to make it more amenable to dynamic languages is phenomenally exciting.”

Prefer Ruby? We’ve got that, too. Created at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia, the Gardens Point Ruby.NET compiler is being released via an open source-style license. Scripting language support on Microsoft’s .NET platform is growing, with projects such as this Australian version of Ruby, IronPython and even ‘Ruby in Steel,’ which blends Ruby programming with Visual Studio 2005 environment.

We do have C# and our new Atlas ecosystem for developing rich Web 2.0 apps.

Stay tuned, there will be more.

Here are some web sites that provide more in the way of our SaaS focus:

• Microsoft SaaS Lighthouse program in which selected startups receive Windows and SQL Server software at no cost for 1 year; architecture consulting direct from Microsoft experts; management and operations advisory support; and marketing assistance.
• Microsoft Empower, is an initiative designed to help ISVs develop and introduce to the market commercial software based on Microsoft technology—for a super affordable price, and free SQL Server Express.
• Get the facts on Windows Server and Linux.
• Read about our Shared Source Initiative.
• Find architectural guidance and sample code for building scalable, multi-tenant SaaS solutions.
• Read about the latest solutions for Windows-based hosting for applications that will help ISVs and hosting service providers simplify the process of enabling software for delivery and consumption as a service. Find SPLA information, too.
• Read about CodePlex, a new collaborative development portal for community-oriented shared source and open source projects.