Windows Azure Marketplace

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.

2011 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

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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.

Key Features of the Windows Azure Marketplace

The following sections describe the most important features of the Windows Azure Marketplace and show how they may address your business needs.

A Global Marketplace for Information and Applications

The Windows Azure Marketplace is a global online market for customers and partners to share, buy, and sell finished SaaS applications, building block components and premium datasets. The Windows Azure Marketplace provides partners a global online sales channel to rapidly 5

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.

Figure 1: The Windows Azure Marketplace Catalog

Extending the Reach and Scale of Your Data and Applications

One challenge for publishers with rich, high-quality information and applications has been how to publicize those assets to the global market. Bear in mind that even localized assets may have a global appeal; for example, a database of United States customer addresses may be of interest to any company selling into the United States from other countries. When you become a partner, you automatically obtain the global reach that the Windows Azure Marketplace enjoys. Furthermore, because the Windows Azure Marketplace is built on Microsoft Azure and runs in industry-leading data centers, it integrates seamlessly with your Windows Azure application or component and wont require additional heavy investments in hardware when publishing data. The service provides almost unlimited scalability and can guarantee high availability. And when you need to increase the size of your dataset, the Windows Azure Marketplace will scale smoothly with your requirements. Naturally, in addition to the data available on the Marketplace, the ability for developers to create, publish and distribute Applications that help end users get the full benefits of the information they are looking for, makes the Windows Azure Marketplace the premier destination for finding data driven solutions on the Windows Azure platform. Data, even if valuable and relevant, still needs to be made available to users in a presentable format that can be integrated into existing user experiences. The ability to bundle application with premium data from any of the many authoritative sources published at the Marketplace provides application developers with a great advantage and an innovative opportunity to provide customers with the information

they crave in a solution that works for them, and to add value to existing applications with additional data that was not previously available.

Benefits of unified billing

The Windows Azure Marketplace functions as an information marketplace and brokerage business. That is, it provides all the facilities a publisher needs to monetize the value of premium data and applications. You no longer need to provide e-commerce functionality such as shopping baskets, check-out tools, and invoicing. In addition, subscribers trust the data and applications found in the Windows Azure Marketplace, because they know they will get highquality products and excellent service, allowing you to simply benefit from the security and availability that is built in.

Diverse Content Types

The Windows Azure Marketplace is a marketplace for information and Windows Azure applications of all types. For example, you could use it to power businesslike publicizing your product, product catalogs, market research, or other web services. However, the Windows Azure Marketplace is not exclusively a resource for business data and applications, and in fact already includes datasets well beyond the traditional concerns of business organizations. The information and applications available in the Windows Azure Marketplace continues to grow and diversify, including both commercial and free options, such as public domain data from federal and state governments and free trials to many pieces of commercial content.

Unified Billing Infrastructure

The Windows Azure Marketplace has a complete and versatile billing infrastructure. In addition, it can be scaled in ways that make sense with how consumers use your data and applications. For subscribers, the unified billing infrastructure means that tracking data usage and predicting cost is simple even when using many subscriptions with multiple content partners. Microsoft handles it all. At the same time, publishers dont need custom billing and invoicing systems. Instead, they get a versatile and powerful system that supports multiple tenants out of the box. For data, Microsoft handles fulfillment, and the Windows Azure Marketplace tracks all customer access and provides detailed reports. For applications, Microsoft handles subscription provisioning and cancellation and provides the publisher with a detailed report. With the Windows Azure Marketplace, you can also create several different subscription models for a single offer. For example, you could create a free subscription with partial access and a premium subscription with full access to the application or data. In the case of data, you can also control how queries are performedand even control whats returned. Furthermore, we encourage content providers to tag the data and supply semantic hints to application developers 8

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.

Robust Security and Availability

Publishers put a lot of time and money into their data and applications, which means that security is of paramount importance. The Windows Azure Marketplace has security built in, ensuring that subscribers get simple access, but denying unauthorized access and preventing denial-of-service and other attacks. The Windows Azure Marketplace runs in industry-leading data centers with specialist firewalls, physical security, backup systems, and redundancy. All these features are maintained by Microsoft so publishers do not need to build a physical infrastructure if using the Windows Azure platform for delivering content. If content is supplied from outside of Windows Azure, an SLA must be obtained to ensure availability of the content.

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.

Integration with Information Worker Applications

The Windows Azure Marketplace integrates with desktop applications smoothly and is an easy way to improve productivity. For example, a data offer could add information to the Microsoft Office Word Research task pane. In Microsoft Office Excel, data from the Windows Azure Marketplace could enrich pivot tables and provide extra insights into business data. Reports in Microsoft Office Access, Microsoft SharePoint Server, or Microsoft SQL Server can mash up data from the local database with data subscribed to in the Windows Azure Marketplace. You can also integrate your data with PowerPivot for Excel for rich, self-service business intelligence and Bing Maps to use spatial datasets for quick, visual instant answers.

A Rich Set of Tools

Every time you assess a set of data, you need a detailed view of its data to determine whether it suits your application. In the Windows Azure Marketplace, you can build queries easily using the Service Explorer. A web-based user interface, the Service Explorer lets you preview results in your browserincluding what data is included and how it is structuredbefore your developers write a single line of code.

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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Figure 2: The Service Explorer

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.

Independent Software Vendors

The Windows Azure Marketplace provides ISVs with a global online sales channel to rapidly accelerate the return on their Windows Azure platform investments, to land new customers, new markets and new revenue opportunities. The Marketplace is a one-stop location supported by Microsoft to help you succeed. 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 provides ISVs with a common security, billing, provisioning, and auditing infrastructure that integrates easily with your existing application.

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Figure 5: An ISV's Weather Content Displayed Geographically

Buying and Selling Information

Content vendors and application providers need to ensure the payment process is seamless and doesnt impede business. For instance, customers tend to dislike payment systems from unknown third-parties, expired or incorrect certificates, unclear invoices, and complex payment schemes that do not reflect usage. Because the Windows Azure Marketplace provides a unified and scalable billing infrastructure, vendors do not need to solve these challenges for themselves. Instead, subscribers can easily compare your data or application with competitors' products so they can determine suitability and quality. Then, they can find their usage statistics instantly and predict costs in advance. Ultimately, they have more confidence in the payment system.

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: Windows Azure Marketplace components are shown in blue.

.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.

Data Publication Architecture

Because the Windows Azure Marketplace runs in the cloud, Windows Azure and SQL Azure make ideal data stores. However, it is important to note that cloud services and data centers from third 13

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.

Information and Service Quality Bar

Microsoft ensures that the offers found in the Windows Azure Marketplace are of the highest quality by working closely with potential publishers. We also complete a detailed vetting process before an offer reaches the catalog. For data offers the following requirements must be met: Publishers must be able to make the data available for resale and have associated rights for distribution through the Windows Azure Marketplace. Publishers: must be able to support data for 12 months to not break consumers of the data; must be able to make multiple copies of the data available to handle load of requests Web Services must conform to the Windows Azure Marketplace specification for interfacing with our system (REST based, ATOM payload, paging support, caching, SLA for availability, uptime, security, etc.). For applications publishers the following requirements must be met: Application must be build using the Windows Azure platform App must be commercially available (not sample code, not beta) App must supported by the publisher for 12 months to not break customers and must be highly available Must not automatically install any software on a Users computer or device without affirmative consent from the User

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.

Explore the Windows Azure Marketplace Today!

Start learning more about the Windows Azure Marketplace now at: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/marketplace/ To examine the catalog and see the capabilities of the Windows Azure Marketplace, please visit the Developer Portal at: https://marketplace.windowsazure.com For the latest news, visit the Windows Azure Marketplace blog at: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/

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