Customer Solution Case Study
/ Car Manufacturer Launches Website in the Cloud, Avoids $100,000 in Capital Expenses
"Windows Azure gave us a cost-effective solution where we only had to pay for what we used. Instead of investing in infrastructure,we were able to put funds into working media.”
David Schoonover, National Manager, Kia Motors America
Kia Motors America wanted to drive consumers to its dealerships to test drive the 2011 Kia Sorento. It developed an advertising campaign that included a television commercial broadcast during the Super Bowl, and a website, hosted through Windows Azure, capable of handling millions of visitors. With Windows Azure, Kia launched the site in just two weeks, quickly scaled the site as demand dictated, and avoided more than U.S.$100,000 in capital expense.
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.Document published June 2010
Business Needs
Kia Motors America offers a complete line of vehicles through more than 670 dealers in the United States. In 2009, the company recorded its fifteenth consecutive year of increased market share in the United States. Kia Motors is in the midst of a dramatic, design-led transformation that enables the company to deliver dynamically styled vehicles to specific customer markets in the United States.
Kia wanted to promote one of its most-anticipated vehicles in recent years, the 2011 Kia Sorento.It decided through its direct marketing agency of record, Meredith Integrated Marketing, to develop a three-month promotion that offered U.S.$25 gift cards to consumers who test drove the car. Additionally, Kia developed an advertising campaign that included a 60-second television commercial during Super Bowl XLIV on February 7, 2010. One objective of the commercial was to encourage consumers to visit a campaign website where interestedconsumers could download a certificate to take to a local Kia dealership and test drive the car.
Because the campaign’s most visible promotion was during the Super Bowl—an event that draws millions of viewers—the destination website needed to be able to handle tens of thousands of visitors. “There have been instances of companies spending millions of dollars on commercials during the Super Bowl only to be faced with a crushing onslaught of visitors and an enormous load that shuts down servers,” says Warwick Downs, Group Account Director at Meredith Integrated Marketing “That was something that we wanted to avoid for our Kia client.”
Not only did Kia Motors need a scalable solution that could handle high levels of burst traffic, but it also sought a cost-effective solution. To set up a traditional physical server infrastructure to handle the anticipated load would require significant capital expenditures, in excess of $100,000, which the company wanted to avoid, particularly considering the relatively short, three-month ad campaign.
Solution
Kia Motors America worked with Meredith Integrated Marketing and Microsoft Gold Certified Partner SoftSource Consulting to deliver the campaign website. Together, the companies decided to use the Windows Azure platform for a cost-effective, scalable solution. Windows Azure serves as the development, service hosting, and service management environment for the Windows Azure platform. Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand computing and storage to host, scale, and manage Web applications on the Internet through Microsoft data centers.
Meredith had existing HTML code for a similar website project and graphical assets for Kia Motors, both of which they provided to SoftSource. Three developers at SoftSource then took the code and assets and, in less than two weeks, developed a Microsoft ASP.NET application using the Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 development system to host in Windows Azure. Based on anticipated demand as a result of the high-visibility commercial, the company started with 100 web role nodes to handle massive scalability. If traffic to the website increased beyond anticipated demand, SoftSource could configure additional web roles to handle the load in just minutes.
Meredith also provided SoftSource with a database schema that it had used for on-premises instances of Microsoft SQL Server database software for other projects. SoftSource used that schema, with only minor modifications, and deployed Microsoft SQL Azure for its relational database needs. Microsoft SQL Azureis a cloud-based relational database service built on SQL Server technologies. It provides a highly available, scalable, multi-tenant database service hosted by Microsoft. Specifically, customer data captured during lead qualification, including demographics information, is stored in SQL Azure.
The team of Kia Motors, Meredith, and SoftSource launched the test-drive promotion website in February 2010; by March 31, the website had logged 83,000 visitors, 30,000 of whom downloaded a test-drive certificate for the 2011 Kia Sorento.
Benefits
As a result of implementing Windows Azure, Kia Motors quickly deployed a promotion website that could beeasily and cost-effectively scaled.
Improved Scalability
SoftSource anticipated demand in the tens of thousands of users and, in order to meet that potential demand, implemented 100 web roles. Even if traffic surpassed what the 100 web roles could handle, SoftSource could change the configuration file to add web roles in just minutes. “With any other server model, we’d have to spend significant time procuring, configuring, and maintaining servers to handle additional load,” says Steven Gray, Director of Engineering at SoftSource. “With Windows Azure, we can scale up or down in a matter of a few minutes.”
Cost-effective Infrastructure
Not only was it cost-prohibitive to set up a traditional server infrastructure to manage the anticipated load of the relatively short campaign, but a traditional server model would have led to underutilized resources. “Windows Azure gave us a cost-effective solution where we only had to pay for what we used. Instead of investing in infrastructure, we were able to put funds into working media,” says David Schoonover, National Manager at Kia Motors America. “The traditional infrastructure to support an effort like this could have cost at least $100,000, most of which we may not have ended up using.”
Fast Time-to-Market
By using Windows Azure, SoftSource quickly developed the website, based on HTML code provided by Meredith, and helped bring the test-drive promotion to market in only two weeks. Deployment was also straightforward. “We configured a new Windows Azure account and deployed the site in minutes,” explains Gray. We were able to avoid the traditionally long, cumbersome process of setting up a server and file sharing agreement that we would have with a traditional hosting model, and instead we were up and running in record time.”
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.Document published June 2010