Companies worldwide are adopting search, discovery and analytics products to uncover trends, provide ad-hoc access to information, enable analysis of past events and better leverage data within the organization. Enterprise search solution providers are looking for new ways to deliver services across multiple data centers, build pay-as-you-go functionality and generate new revenue streams.
Mindtree helped a leading provider of enterprise search solutions port its flagship product to Windows Azure platform to improve system performance and availability and drive new sources of revenue.
Industry
Hi Tech / Enterprise Search
Offering
Cloud / Infrastructure Management
The challenges
The enterprise search provider faced several high-level challenges including improving efficiency, generating new revenue and preserving its competitive position as an industry leader. To achieve these goals, the search provider needed to streamline processes and make its top enterprise product available to customers through a cloud-based platform.
After reviewing the available platforms, the company determined that search-as-a-service on the Windows Azure platform would provide the most benefits. To port its flagship application to Azure and provide the required capabilities, the search provider needed a technology partner with broad and deep integration experience and meet aggressive timelines.
In addition to addressing porting challenges, the partner also needed to provide persistent storage for the search product’s indexes. Finally, the firm needed to maximize Azure Virtual Machine (VM) utilization and integrate the solution with the search provider's existing provisioning application for customer signup. The firm wanted to:
- Enable unique URL access for each customer LWE instance
- Provide out-of-the-box full-text search for existing Azure customers
- Ensure cost-effectiveness
- Make the service available across multiple data centers
- Build-pay-as you-go functionality
Our solution
Mindtree, being a Windows Azure Circle Partner and a leading systems integrator for the Windows Azure Platform was chosen for the mission-critical project. Mindtree is one of the early partners to have worked with Microsoft during the initial phases of Windows Azure.
Our experts collaborated with the search provider to evaluate the application and business models and create a detailed roadmap for transitioning to cloud. Next, a cloud-based version of the firm’s flagship product was designed and developed. This included creating high-level architecture, application design and porting to Windows Azure.
In addition to the design and development of the solution, Mindtree experts also provided customer support, performance testing and monitoring to ensure that the solution met the client's business objectives.
Business Impact
- Enabled new revenue streams through search-as-a-service
- Ensured optimal application performance and resource utilization
- Improved reliability and availability
- Reduced costs with automatic provisioning and de-provisioning
- Provided business flexibility through functionality for multiple payment plans
- Optimized security through individualized access URLs
Customer support
Mindtree provided 24x7 development support for production issues and leveraged the proprietary Mindtree MWatch platform to continuously monitor existing customer instances and the performance of Azure backend virtual machines.
Performance testing
The team tested the ported application for each payment plan by applying varying crawl and search performance loads. The client was enabled to arrive at the optimal configuration for each plan by running performance tests on different Azure virtual machine sizes.
Monitoring
Performance counters, viewer logs and crash dumps were captured for each virtual machine. Proven third-party tools like AzureWatch, Azure Diagnostics Manager and Azure Performance Monitor Tool were used to monitor performance of the virtual machines. Functionality to capture information for billing and notifying customers was also instituted.
“Thanks to Mindtree’s expert team and their proprietary technology tools, they met our aggressive deadlines and successfully launched the product on time. The new cloud-based solution provided the capabilities we need to maintain our position in the market and enabled new revenue streams.”
Senior Vice President of Engineering, Enterprise Search Provider
