Persistent Systems Saves an estimated 55% and Enables more Services with the Windows Azure Platform

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1 Persistent Systems Saves an estimated 55% and Enables more Services with the Windows Azure Platform egovernment application delivered with better scalability and lower costs Introduction Established in 1990, Persistent Systems is recognized as an award-winning technology company specializing in software product development services. Persistent Systems has over 4,300+ employees in 18 cities on 3 continents to serve customers worldwide. With innovative business models, and reusable assets and frameworks, Persistent helps its customers deliver solutions cost effectively, faster, with more functionality and with higher quality, thereby providing increased revenues and margins, and enhanced brand value. Persistent Systems has delivered over 2,400 software product releases to their more than 175 customers in the last six years. As a competitive advantage, Persistent has developed proven processes for the entire product lifecycle which reduce time to market while delivering consistent quality and customer satisfaction as evidenced by customer partnerships that span many years. Some of Persistent Systems customers include: The world's largest computer company that manufactures and sells -hardware and software One of the world's leading innovators of software applications The world s largest measurement and instrument company U.S. provider of broadband voice and data communications The largest software product company in the world World's largest enterprise software company North America's most-admired software company and leader in personal finance software Data warehouse appliance leader The world's top internet brand and largest media publisher on the web. Persistent Systems Software Product Development Services US Headquarters in San Jose, CA. Development centers in Pune, Nagpur, Goa and Hyderabad (India) employees Requirements: Eliminate worry about infrastructure related issues, and focus resources on the features that matter most to our customers. Goals: Focus resources on customer versus daily operations to deliver more services, and drive development / delivery agility. Persistent Systems Case Study Windows Azure Page 1

2 The Need Persistent has developed a suite of public sector e-governance applications and was seeking ways to reduce infrastructure-related issues. The goal was to enable resources to focus on the features that matter most to customers, versus investing in acquiring and managing on-premises server infrastructure to host the applications. The solution is Persistent s egovernance Portfolio, a suite of applications for Indian Government bodies and citizens, currently delivering the following services (with more planned in the near future): 1. Grievance Redressal System 2. Roads and Infrastructure 3. Census Department 4. Election Office 5. Tenant Provisioning System With the Windows Azure providing a cloud platform, with computing, database, storage and integration on demand, the Persistent team found a solution that could easily meet their technical requirements, including: A trusted on-demand computational platform; Reduced learning curve for professionals familiar with.net, ASP.NET, SQL Server; Scalable relational database capabilities; Service Management APIs to allow simple automated provisioning for multiple tenants; Service Bus to facilitate inter-application communication. For the business team, Windows Azure helps the team focus resources on core-competencies and customers, as well as delivers: Easy migration of existing ASP.NET solutions, which translates to low up-front migration costs, increased reuse of existing assets, and faster time to market; Reduced maintenance overhead without sacrificing scalability and availability; Reduced learning curve provides greater productivity and quicker time to market; Pay-as-you-go model with on-demand computation, database, storage, integration and bandwidth, all in one platform. Persistent Systems Case Study Windows Azure Page 2

3 Current Operations To support the egovernance Portfolio application, Persistent Systems currently has a small three-tier server farm, consisting of 2 IIS Web servers, 2 application servers and 2 Microsoft SQL server database servers. Each of these servers is 2 CPU / 2 core, 8GB systems. As the servers are already in place and are relatively new systems, the purchase price of the servers and infrastructure was considered a sunk cost, and not included in this comparison. In addition, as the infrastructure is new, all maintenance and support contracts were pre-paid for hardware and software. Server operations were included, as well as the costs for administration and support, co-location facilities and bandwidth. These costs amounted to: $347 per month per server for co-location facility rent, services and bandwidth $119 per month per server for server administration and support labor Tallying the costs over a three-year analysis period, Persistent Systems would spend $146K in on-going operations for these servers, a cost of about $4K per month. As additional services and customers are added, servers, software and infrastructure would be needed to support growth, requiring capital investment to purchase the infrastructure, resources to setup and install the assets, and growing operational costs. To keep this case conservative, Persistent Systems assumed nominal growth, in order to get a baseline for comparison. However, one of the main goals of Persistent Systems is to grow the number of customers this application supports, and the services within the application suite as efficiently and effectively as possible. To grow with co-located / on-premises systems, each new server (including software and infrastructure) that is added would cost $3,000 in amortized annual purchase costs alone (with an assumed useful life of three years), and an additional $5,400 per year in on-going operational costs, for a total annual cost of over $8,400 for each new physical server added. The Windows Azure Platform Working with Microsoft, Persistent Systems sized the requirements for the Windows Azure Platform and estimated that 6 instances of Windows Azure would be required initially, running 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. SQL Azure was required, and estimated to be 2 x 10GB instances, initially. Bandwidth and AppFabric services were added, and the platform licensing was projected to cost Persistent Systems $1,192 per month, a total cost of $14.3K per year. To migrate to, and optimize Windows Azure Platform operations, Persistent Systems invested an estimated 300-person hours, an investment of $8,800. Persistent Systems Case Study Windows Azure Page 3

4 Windows Azure Platform Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Total Compute (Windows Azure instances) Storage (non-relational, files) Storage transactions (non-relational) 1GB databases 10GB databases AppFabric Service Bus connections AppFabric Access Control transactions Bandwidth - inbound Bandwidth - outbound IT administration and support Setup and delivery Total Number of Instances Average Cost per Instance Average Cost per Month $6,307 $6,570 $7,358 $20,235 $131 $160 $195 $486 $88 $107 $131 $326 $0 $0 $0 $0 $3,500 $3,600 $4,700 $11,800 $96 $96 $96 $288 $48 $48 $48 $144 $1,343 $1,409 $1,478 $4,230 $4,031 $4,227 $4,434 $12,692 $1,548 $1,677 $1,952 $5,177 $8,941 $14 $0 $8,955 $26,033 $17,908 $20,392 $64, $4,339 $2,843 $2,913 $3,365 $2,169 $1,492 $1,699 $1,787 The Bottom Line Compared to the co-location infrastructure for Persistent Systems, Windows Azure is expected to deliver several key advantages: Focus resources on new development versus managing the delivery infrastructure Enable the application to better scale, on demand, versus investing in a fixed infrastructure when growth needs occur Saved Persistent Systems an estimated $82,000 in on-going operations costs for the current 6- server farm Be able to support growth more effectively, with upside potential of saving 75% or more versus initial / ongoing cost per server added to the co-location site Generate a potential 130% return on investment, comparing the total cost of operations for the Windows Azure Platform versus the savings compared to co-located on-premises servers Recoup the migration costs in 4 months from launch Persistent Systems Case Study Windows Azure Page 4

5 Windows Azure Platform vs. On-Premises Windows Azure Platform Savings Over Three Year Analysis Period Windows Azure Platform On-Premises Windows Azure Platform Savings vs. On-Premises Web / worker computing $20,235 $7,150 ($13,085) % Storage (non-relational) $812 $510 ($302) -59.2% Database computing, licensing and storage $11,800 $3,895 ($7,905) % Service Bus connections $288 $0 ($288) 0.0% Access Control transactions $144 $0 ($144) 0.0% Bandwidth $16,922 $16,489 ($433) -2.6% IT administration and support $5,177 $34,469 $29, % Facilities and overhead $0 $83,816 $83, % Setup and delivery $8,955 $234 ($8,721) -3,726.9% Total Cost Over Three Year Analysis Period $64,333 $146,563 $82, % Number of Instances / Physical Servers 7 9 Average Total Cost per Month $1,787 $4,071 $2,284 Net Present Costs (discount rate = 11.0%) $55,530 $123,350 $67, % Windows Azure Platform vs. On-Premises Comparing the total cost of ownership of the Windows Azure Platform to an on-premises solution over the next three years Persistent Systems Case Study Windows Azure Page 5

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