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Windows Azure Marketplace Whitepaper
Windows Azure Marketplace Whitepaper
Windows Azure Marketplace Whitepaper
Published June 2011 Applies to Windows Azure Marketplace Summary The Windows Azure Marketplace is a global online market for customers and partners to share, buy, and sell finished Software-as-a-Service applications, building block components and premium datasets. Designed with the needs of ISVs, data publishers, and end customers in mind, the Windows Azure Marketplace helps connect companies seeking innovative cloud based solutions with partners who have developed solutions that are ready to use. For providers of solutions, the Windows Azure Marketplace provides partners a global online sales channel to rapidly accelerate the return on their Windows Azure platform investment.
Copyright
The information contained in this document represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation on the issues discussed as of the date of publication. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information presented after the date of publication. This white paper is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT. Complying with all applicable copyright laws is the responsibility of the user. Without limiting the rights under copyright, no part of this document may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), or for any purpose, without the express written permission of Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft may have patents, patent applications, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property rights covering subject matter in this document. Except as expressly provided in any written license agreement from Microsoft, the furnishing of this document does not give you any license to these patents, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property.
Microsoft, Windows Azure, Access, Active Directory, Excel, IntelliSense, Microsoft Dynamics, SharePoint, SQL Azure, SQL Server, Visual Studio, Windows, Windows Live, and Windows Server are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.
Contents
Introduction....................................................................................................................................................................... 4 Data.................................................................................................................................................................................. 4 Applications .................................................................................................................................................................. 5 Key Features of the Windows Azure Marketplace............................................................................................... 5 A Global Marketplace for Information and Applications ............................................................................. 5 Extending the Reach and Scale of Your Data and Applications ................................................................ 7 Benefits of unified billing ......................................................................................................................................... 8 Diverse Content Types .............................................................................................................................................. 8 Unified Billing Infrastructure ................................................................................................................................... 8 Robust Security and Availability ............................................................................................................................ 9 Analytics Features ....................................................................................................................................................... 9 Integration with Information Worker Applications ........................................................................................ 9 A Rich Set of Tools...................................................................................................................................................... 9 Typical Scenarios........................................................................................................................................................... 10 Developers.................................................................................................................................................................. 10 Independent Software Vendors .......................................................................................................................... 11 Buying and Selling Information .......................................................................................................................... 12 Architectural Overview ............................................................................................................................................... 12 Architecture ............................................................................................................................................................... 13 Data Publication Architecture ............................................................................................................................. 13 Information and Service Quality Bar ................................................................................................................. 14 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................................................... 14 Summary ..................................................................................................................................................................... 14 Explore the Windows Azure Marketplace Today! ........................................................................................ 15
Introduction
The Windows Azure Marketplace is a global online market for customers and partners to discover, buy, and sell premium, trusted public domain and commercial data and Windows Azure applications. The Windows Azure Marketplace helps connect companies seeking innovative cloud based solutions with partners who have developed solutions that are ready to use. The Marketplace enables customers to gain new insights into business performance and processes with by bringing together disparate sets of data and premium applications in new and innovative ways. Enabling global reach, the Marketplace provides partners an online sales channel to rapidly accelerate the return on their Windows Azure platform investments by landing new customers, entering new markets and creating new revenue opportunities. This paper describes the most important features of the Windows Azure Marketplace and how they address common business needs. It also outlines common business scenarios that the Windows Azure Marketplace addresses and describes the system's architecture.
Data
The internet is a source of vast quantities of data, both public domain and commercial content. Many organizations publish datasets in a wide variety of disparate formats, to which customers can subscribe. However, it can be difficult for customers to locate and subscribe to these datasets. Furthermore, it can be challenging to use these datasets in ways that add value. Consider a business that has identified a need for a specific type of data, whether it is customers and their buying habits, products from suppliers, geographical information, population statistics, scientific research, political statistics, or entertainment information. An internet search will locate several competing data suppliers. But how does the customer make a fair and direct comparison of the dataset features to select the one most suitable? And this is just the beginning. After the company has located and chosen a suitable dataset, how do they integrate it into their business? The fact is, data is often available in a wide variety of formats. For example, many publishers use XML, but define their own schema, and may use SOAP, REST, or JSON to exchange information. As a result, the business must devote development time to integrate the dataset into its desktop applications, web sites, cloud applications, and other data-consuming software. This issue is multiplied across every single dataset that the company acquires from different sources. After the dataset has been integrated into the company, users get their hands on it for the first time. Poor quality data only becomes obvious at this pointand if it is, in fact, not useful, the purchase and development costs have been for naught. And although many dataset suppliers promise a certain level of availability through their Service Level Agreements (SLAs), some suppliers are over-ambitious and may not meet their obligations. 4
Auditing and billing can also present an issue because each data publisher is likely to bill on a different basis that may not suit the subscriber's use. For example, a monthly subscription may be expensive if a dataset is used exclusively by a small department. The company may subscribe because the data is essential, but it pays the same price as another customer who generates ten times the number of queries. Furthermore, a publisher may not provide statistics on data use. If a company wants to know how much the dataset is used, it may have to develop its own code to keep track. And finally, using that dataset in conjunction with other data sources can be problematic. Can it be mashed up and associated with other data? Can its semantics be easily augmented flexibly associate and correlate data? All of these problems are multiplied when an organization subscribes to many different datasets from different suppliers.
Applications
As more applications move to take advantage of the cloud, the quantity of web solutions and cloud based services, both free and commercial is growing at an unprecedented rate; however, it is increasingly becoming difficult for customers to find right solutions for their business needs. Think about a BI specialist that is in the need of an application to help him analyze the sales and marketing numbers from the last quarter, or a marketing professional looking for an application that will help them to launch and manage the many Facebook promotions that they will be running over the upcoming months. An internet search might return some compelling options, but how does the user understand whether she can trust the application, how does she compare it with other options or find out which one is the most suitable? Billing can also present an issue because the application developer is likely to bill on a different basis that may not suit the subscribers use. For example, a monthly subscription to an application may bill on a basis that is not suitable for a small department or an individual. Management of all subscribed applications is also very problematic: multiple accounts are required, multiple bills need to be managed and paid, billing information has to be provided and entered in a variety of forms at the different applications and subscriptions have to be renewed individually by visiting each of the application administration websites.
accelerate the return on their Windows Azure platform investments. The Windows Azure Marketplace helps partners land new customers, new markets and new revenue opportunities. In other words, it is a single location that data and application publishers can use to publish their valuable assets and that customers can use to subscribe to and use data and applications of all types.
The Windows Azure Marketplace is the place to go to find the solutions you need for your business. Whether youre an ISV looking to list your finished Windows Azure application and get exposure to millions of potential new customers, or youre a developer in your garage who has built a great Windows Azure based component that you want to sell, the Windows Azure Marketplace lets you extend your sales force and reach new audiences that can help drive your business. In addition to finished applications and components, the Windows Azure Marketplace offers industry leading data, allowing users to easily discover, explore, subscribe to and consume data from both trusted public domains and premium commercial providers. For data publishers, listing your data on the Windows Azure Marketplace improves its discoverability, lets you extend your sales force and reach new audiences that can help drive your business, and achieves global reach with high availability.
One of the real benefits that the Windows Azure Marketplace provides is consistency, from the way datasets and applications are described to the method in which subscriptions are managed. The Marketplace handles usage tracking and billing such that providers can easily reach new consumers and allows subscribers to view all their usage in a single location. As a result, billing is more flexible. And when it comes to integrating data into business applications, developers can use the same techniques and similar code with subsequent subscriptions due to of the consistent presentation of data and robust Windows Azure development platform.
they crave in a solution that works for them, and to add value to existing applications with additional data that was not previously available.
and information workers. By doing so, disparate data can logically be combined and joined by clients to extend the power of the datasets. In addition for all offers, you set the pricing, terms of use, marketplace descriptions, samples, and more.
Analytics Features
The Windows Azure Marketplace offers rich analytics features for data, helping data publishers to extend the power of their data. In fact, using the Windows Azure Marketplace you can very simply build visualizations and applications using data from the Marketplace or you can choose to publish your data driven application on the Marketplace for others to purchase, allowing you to use your expertise to deliver rich experiences to your customers.
The Service Explorer is incredibly useful for developers who build cross-platform applications because it creates URLs that they can copy and paste into their application code to call the data service. Developers can use existing OData client libraries and in some cases get additional prebuilt proxy classes to import into their Microsoft Visual Studio projects. Developers also get full Microsoft IntelliSense support and a simple API to work with. The secure REST based OData APIs provide an abstraction over where the data resideswhether its a remote web service, a blob store, a rich SQL database, or content in the Azure platform. The Service Explorer also works well for information workers. For instance, they can download a PowerPivot file that enables rich data analysis within Excel.
Typical Scenarios
The Windows Azure Marketplace improves the discovery and acquisition of data and applications in a vast variety of business and non-commercial scenarios. A few examples are discussed below.
Developers
The Windows Azure Marketplace helps developers make the most of the rich data it its catalog at every stage of development. In the beginning, you can take out a trial subscription to a data offer to identify the most appropriate content for enabling the application and ensuring that it meets your needs. Then, you can visually explore the content in the browser-based Service Explorer tool, submitting queries and previewing results. When you are sure you have the right dataset, the Windows Azure Marketplace assists you as you build your application. The Service Explorer can returns results in OData (or the raw data format provided by the publisher where applicable) for use as sample data and generates URLs to the queries you run. In some cases you may want to copy and paste these URLs into your code or other applications to call the service. Most importantly, you can use any of the existing OData client libraries to access a Marketplace data service from a number of various platforms.
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The Windows Azure Marketplace Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) help developers work with datasets in the same way on many different platforms. Because the APIs are consistent, you can quickly develop code to support desktop, Web, mobile, and other clients. And because they are the Windows Azure Marketplace is built on the REST architecture and static services feature full support for the Open Data Format specification, high quality data is simple to discover.
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Architectural Overview
The following sections illustrate the design of the Windows Azure Marketplace service.
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Architecture
The Windows Azure Marketplace works as an intermediary between the data found in data stores or cloud powered applications and consumers.
.Figure 6 illustrates interoperability and composition of consumers, platform components and artifact that comprise Windows Azure Marketplace. Windows Azure Marketplace can be accessed from many platforms and those Office applications and client-server systemssuch as SQL Server and Microsoft Dynamics Serverscan use its data. Windows Azure Marketplace data sources also support any operating system or hardware platform are supported, because data access uses REST and OData standards and is secured with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). Users can authenticate with their Windows Live ID. In this way, users can access the Windows Azure Marketplace through their usual Microsoft Windows user account. Notice also that the Marketplace tracks all access and generates invoices in logging and accounts databases. Applications published in the Windows Azure Marketplace also leverage the same scalable architecture.
parties can be used just as easily and are supported via proxy layers that conform to the Windows Azure Marketplace SLA and interfaces. The Windows Azure Marketplace includes Data Access Layers (DALs) that encapsulate all the logic required to query the data store and remote web services. Please note that load balancers are built into the Marketplace on the publication side as well as the data access side, which provides smooth scaling to large data centers and heavy traffic.
Conclusion
Summary
The Windows Azure Marketplace helps simplify all the steps associated with discovering, purchasing, and selling premium, trusted public domain and commercial data and Windows Azure applications. It helps publishers to reduce the challenges of marketing and selling their
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high quality data and applications, just as it helps consumers ensure they get quality data and applications that are secure and easy to use. Publishers get: Easy publication of data and Windows Azure applications. Developer tooling on the Microsoft platform to ease Visual Studio and .NET development. Global reach, providing partners an online sales channel to rapidly accelerate the return on their Windows Azure platform investments by landing new customers, entering new markets and creating new revenue opportunities. A scalable Microsoft cloud computing platform that handles delivery, billing, and reporting. Developers get: Trial subscriptions that let you investigate content and develop applications without paying data royalties. Consistent REST-based APIs across all datasets that facilitate development on any platform. The ability to access data easily using any OData client library on any platform. Common security, billing, auditing, and authentication model
Information workers get: Trial subscriptions that let you investigate applications and data before you pay. Simple, predictable licensing models for acquiring data and applications. Integration with PowerPivot in Microsoft Excel to fully utilize purchased data in your business analytics.
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