Real World Windows Azure: Interview with Sinclair Schuller, Chief Executive Officer at Apprenda : Azure Feeds

Real World Windows Azure: Interview with Sinclair Schuller, Chief Executive Officer at Apprenda

by WindowsAzure via Windows Azure on 8/19/2010 4:03:00 PM

As part of the Real World Windows Azure series, we talked to Sinclair Schuller, CEO at Apprenda, about using the Windows Azure platform to deliver the company's middleware solution, which helps Apprenda's customers deliver cloud applications. Here's what he had to say:

MSDN: Tell us about Apprenda and the services you offer.

Schuller: Apprenda serves independent software vendors (ISVs) in the United States and Europe that build business-to-business software applications on the Microsoft .NET Framework. Our product, SaaSGrid, is a next-generation application server built to solve the architecture, business, and operational complexities of delivering software as a service in the cloud.

MSDN: What was the biggest challenge you faced prior to implementing the Windows Azure platform?

Schuller: We wanted to offer customers a way to offload some of their server capacity needs to a cloud solution and integrate their cloud capacity with their on-premises capacity. We looked at other cloud providers, like Google App Engine and Salesforce.com, but those are fundamentally the wrong solutions for our target customers because they do not allow developers enough flexibility in how they build applications for the cloud.

MSDN: Can you describe the solution you built with the Windows Azure platform?

Schuller: SaaSGrid is the unifying middleware for optimizing application delivery for any deployment paradigm. With SaaSGrid and the Windows Azure platform, we can offer our customers more infrastructure options and they can build very sophisticated applications with the .NET Framework. We also see cloud computing as the biggest shift in how infrastructure is provisioned and consumed, and Window Azure gives customers the ability to take full advantage of the simplified provisioning and database scaling capabilities of Windows Azure and Microsoft SQL Azure.

MSDN: What makes your solution unique?

Schuller: The software industry is moving to a software-as-a-service model. Embracing this change requires developers to refactor existing applications and build out new infrastructure in order to move from shipping software to delivering software. By coupling the infrastructure capabilities of Windows Azure with SaaSGrid, we can offer our customers an incredibly robust, highly efficient platform at a low cost. Plus, customers can go to market with their cloud offerings in record time.
MSDN: What benefits have you seen since implementing the Windows Azure platform?

Schuller: With SaaSGrid and Windows Azure, ISVs can move their existing .NET-based applications to the cloud up to 60 percent faster and with 80 percent less new code than developing from the ground up. Customers do not have to invest significant capital and attain lower application delivery costs while ensuring application responsiveness. At the same time, with Windows Azure, customers can plan an infrastructure around baseline average capacity-rather than building around peat compute-intensive loads-and offset peak loads with Windows Azure. This helps our customers reduce their overall IT infrastructure footprint by as much as 70 percent.