Customer Solution Case Study
/ Electronics Provider Releases Application in the Cloud, Saves Thousands in Costs
Overview
Country or Region:Singapore
Industry:Manufacturing
Customer Profile
Since 1984, Flextronics has served a global market of electronics OEMs with contract manufacturing, supply-chain solutions, and tailored services. It has a network of many facilities worldwide.
Business Situation
When a major customer asked Flextronics to deploy the Flextronics Authorized Service Center (ASC) application in its retail locations, the company decided to design an alternative to the on-premises solution.
Solution
Flextronics partnered with CloudXtension to take advantage of cloud computing by migrating ASC to the Windows Azure platform, which helped save costs, enable scalability, and ease maintenance.
Benefits
- Faster time-to-market
- Reduced costs
- Standardized technology
- Reliable service
Husam Laswi, IT Director of Factory Operations, Flextronics
Flextronics is a multinational manufacturing services provider that provides design, engineering, and manufacturing services for electronics OEMs worldwide. In early 2010, one of its major enterprise customers asked the company to deploy the Flextronics Authorized Service Center (ASC) application—used to track repairs of electronics devices—at its retail stores. Instead of deploying an on-premises version of the application for its customer, Flextronics decided to take advantage of the stability, scalability, and easy maintenance of cloud computing. With the help of CloudXtension, a member of the Microsoft Partner Network, the company reworked the application by using familiar Microsoft development tools and migrated it to the Windows Azure platform within six months. Flextronics benefits from a fast time-to-market, reduced up-front maintenance costs, standardized technology, and reliable service.
Situation
Headquartered in Singapore, Flextronics is an electronics manufacturing services provider to some of the world’s top technology brands. The company has more than 200,000 employees and leverages its global economies of scale to help customers design, build, ship, and service electronics products through a network of factories in 30 countries worldwide. “Flextronics is in the business of contract manufacturing,” says Husam Laswi, IT Director of Factory Operations at Flextronics. “We tailor design, manufacturing, and services for electronics OEMs in market segments, including computing, medical, consumer mobile, power supply, automotive, and more.”
Currently, Flextronics maintains two on-premises data centers—one in the United States and one in Asia—where many of its enterprise applications are hosted and scalability is monitored and adjusted based on demand. Its developers use the Microsoft Visual Studio development system to create approximately 40 percent of the company’s factory applications. Also, the company operates older Microsoft platform manufacturing execution systems (MES) software at some of its factory locations.
In 2009, the Chief Information Officer at Flextronics announced that the company would be migrating more of its applications to the cloud to benefit from ease of scalability, increased stability, and decreased maintenance costs. “We got direction from company leadership that we should be looking at how to host applications in the cloud,” says Laswi. “The question became, ‘Why can’t it be hosted in the cloud?’—instead of the cloud being an afterthought. That’s the way our IT infrastructure is going.”
One of the company’s major customers wanted to use its Flextronics Authorized Service Center (ASC) application to track repairs of electronic devices at thousands of retail stores around the world. Originally developed in 2008, ASC is a tool that Flextronics developed by using the Microsoft ASP.NET framework. Retailers can use ASC at their retail repair shops to process repair service requests (see Figure 1). For example, employees can use it to review the customer’s warranty, search for parts in inventory, prepare quotes, upload photos of products, and track the status of repairs.
Because the retail locations of the customer are outside of the Flextronics firewall, the company decided that ASC would be the first customer application that it would deploy in the Windows Azure cloud environment. The company wanted the solution to be scalable because it didn’t know how fast its customer would adopt the application at its retail locations. “We don’t have enough data centers to cover the many regions in which our customer conducts business,” says Roger Yang, Senior Business Analyst at Flextronics, “If you’re a retail store in Asia, you don’t want to worry about logging onto a data center in the United States.”
Flextronics wanted to use a cloud solution that could integrate with other Flextronics applications, and it needed to develop and implement the application quickly. “Our timeline was limited,” says Laswi. “We knew that if we hosted the application in our own data centers, we would have had to deal with requisitions for capital expenditures.”
Solution
Flextronics evaluated cloud solutions including Salesforce.com and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). If the company had used Salesforce.com, it would have needed to spend time and effort redeveloping the solution. By using Windows Azure, it could leverage existing ASC technology. The company also determined that using Amazon EC2 would be like having another server that just happens to be in the cloud because the environment is not managed. Says Laswi, “If we had needed operating system or database patches, for example, it would have been our responsibility to maintain the environment.”
Flextronics wanted greater interoperability with its traditional development paradigm. Because ASC had been built in ASP.NET—a web application framework from Microsoft—the company decided to employ the Windows Azure platform. Developers can use Windows Azure to host, scale, and manage web applications on the Internet through Microsoft data centers. The platform includes a comprehensive set of development tools, services, and management systems familiar to Flextronics developers. “Windows Azure offers proven technology that’s fully integrated with Visual Studio,” says Laswi, “Plus, we knew we could rely on Microsoft for support.”
Flextronics turned to CloudXtension, a member of the Microsoft Partner Network, to help implement ASC in the cloud. In January 2010, CloudXtension changed its company mission to serve only customers who want to build or migrate applications by using the Windows Azure platform. Flextronics assigned two employees—a development manager and a solution manager—to coordinate with CloudXtension on the ASC project, and CloudXtension performed all the development work.
Starting in April 2010, CloudXtension conducted a proof-of-concept pilot program that featured the ASC application with basic functionality—checking in service orders—running on the Windows Azure platform. “Flextronics was able to see that we could build capabilities into the ASC application in a cost-effective way,” says Sunil Kapoor, Senior Director at CloudXtension.
To develop the application for the Windows Azure platform, CloudXtension had to make a few changes to ASC. Flextronics originally built the ASC database by using the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 data management system. Specifically, it used component object model (COM) standards to create database objects. CloudXtension developed a workaround to enable database object creation by using Microsoft SQL Azure, which provides database capabilities as a fully managed service with no need for on-premises hardware or software.
To manage reports in its on-premises ASC application, CloudXtension developed a reporting workaround for SQL Azure by using Microsoft Reporting Services technology. The workaround allowed logic to be separated so that all data sources—including nondatabase data—could be compatible by using client report definition (RDSL) files created in Microsoft Visual Studio 2008.
The cloud-based ASC application also uses Language Integrated Query (LINQ), a set of extensions to the Microsoft .NET Framework that speeds the process of creating layered applications—for example, ASC includes a database tier, a web service tier, and an application tier—by providing a native language syntax for querying data from disparate data sources and class libraries to take advantage of these capabilities. The ASC deployment uses LINQ to retrieve uploaded product photos, which Flextronics stores by using server-side Blob storage in Windows Azure, from where the image objects can be retrieved from the database tables. “By using LINQ, we can query and operate on different data domains, including relational databases, XML, custom entities, and any third-party data source,” says Kapoor. “This gives us full intelligence and refactoring support over the code.”
CloudXtension also uses Access Control, which is part of Windows Azure, a set of integrated technologies that developers can use to connect applications and services between Windows Azure and on-premises deployments. Access Control provides an easy way to get federated authentication and rules-driven, claims-based authorization by using a username and password. In this case, the ASC application needed to connect to a proprietary Flextronics product that provides estimated payment information.
CloudXtension spent three months reworking ASC to function in Windows Azure and conducting user acceptance tests. It took four weeks to develop custom workarounds and migrate the application. ASC went into production at one of the customer’s retail stores on September 15, 2010.
For the next phase of the project, the Flextronics team is making significant enhancements to the product, including refining user roles, supporting PDF uploads, and building an interface for handheld mobile devices that the customer can use for off-site repair jobs. Flextronics intends to implement the ASC application to 2,000 of its customer’s retail stores throughout 2011 and 2012.
Benefits
Flextronics developed and deployed the cloud-based ASC application quickly and easily. It saved costs on capital expenditures and ongoing maintenance and monitoring by employing familiar and reliable Microsoft technologies.
The customer who requested the ASC application for its retail stores reports that it is satisfied with the tool. “Our customer is extremely happy with the Windows Azure implementation,” says Laswi. “As a result, we have been able to sustain our business and enable our customer to grow its business.”
Faster Time-to-Market
It took only six months—from planning and development to testing and implementation—before Flextronics was hosting the ASC application live on the Windows Azure platform. Because Flextronics is determined to deploy its applications in the cloud whenever that approach adds value, its business model is shifting. It no longer has to take the time required to procure hardware and get approval for capital expenditures. It also avoids setting up hardware in its data centers or at customer retail locations. “By developing for the Windows Azure platform, we’re able to respond to new application development requirements much faster,” says Laswi. “We can deliver at least twice as fast—maybe faster.”
Reduced Costs
Flextronics is saving significantly on capital expenditures and reports that the up-front setup costs for deploying ASC in the cloud were minimal. The company avoids restructuring any hardware infrastructure if the application requirements outgrow the on-premises server capabilities because scalability is automatically adjusted in the cloud. Additionally, because Windows Azure is hosted by Microsoft, Flextronics saves the costs of monitoring and maintaining the hosting environment.
“Windows Azure is very cost effective. It helps us control our costs associated with fluctuating demand,” says Laswi. “The subscription service for hosting our application in the cloud is in the hundreds of dollars. Without the cloud, we would have to spend at least [U.S.]$1,500 in up-front costs for just one location. Over a five-year period, for just the ASC application deployment, we’re saving tens of thousands of dollars.”
Standardized Technology
Flextronics relies on Microsoft technology for most of its factory operations and development efforts. It takes advantage of the interoperability between Windows Azure and Visual Studio to easily develop and administer the application, and the technical team can focus on the solution instead of the infrastructure. “By using Windows Azure, we were able to focus on features,” says Laswi. “We have many new possibilities to create applications that feature a distributed layout but are interconnected.”
The company and its partner worked closely with Microsoft during the ASC development and migration process. “Windows Azure supports multiple popular languages, including PHP and Ruby, which makes it easy for our developers who use Visual Studio,” says Kapoor. “Plus, the standards-based interoperability with XML makes data portability simple and helps us with migration.”
More Reliable Service
As a multinational company with customers across the globe, Flextronics can rely on the fact that Microsoft has data centers worldwide. “With a database application like ASC, you have to make sure the data is synchronized,” says Yang. “With Windows Azure, synchronization is taken care of automatically. We don’t have to worry about having enough servers or where the servers are located. We treat the cloud as just another server. Scalability is built in.”
Flextronics also takes advantage of the high level of support that comes with Windows Azure. “That the Microsoft name is behind Windows Azure gives me a lot of confidence,” says Laswi. “We can trust the Microsoft support team if we have issues. They’ve been there for us through this implementation.”
Windows Azure
Windows Azure provides developers the functionality to build applications that span from consumer to enterprise scenarios. The key components of Windows Azure are:
- Windows Azure. Windows Azure is a development, service hosting, and service management environment. It provides developers with on-demand compute, storage, bandwidth, content delivery, middleware, and marketplace capabilities to build, host, and scale web applications through Microsoft data centers.
- Microsoft SQL Azure. Microsoft SQL Azure is a self-managed, multitenant relational cloud database service built on Microsoft SQL Server technologies. It provides built-in high availability, fault tolerance, and scale-out database capabilities, as well as cloud-based data synchronization and reporting, to build custom enterprise and web applications and extend the reach of data assets.
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