California College Speeds Application Innovation,
Cuts Thousands of Dollars in Costs with the Cloud
Customer: College of Agricultural and
Environmental Sciences (University of
California, Davis)
Website: www.ucdavis.edu and
www.caes.ucdavis.edu
Customer Size: 33,000 students and
29,000 employees
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Education—Universities
Customer Profile
Founded in 1905, the University of
California, Davis is known for its
commitment to sustainability, research,
and academics. The university's College
of Agricultural and Environmental
Sciences is internationally renowned.
Software and Services
 Windows Azure platform
− Windows Azure
− Windows Azure Blob Storage
− Windows Azure Cache Services
− Windows Azure Cloud Services
− Windows Azure SQL Database
− Windows Azure Web Sites

Microsoft Office
− Microsoft Office 365
For more information about other
Microsoft customer successes, please visit:
www.microsoft.com/casestudies
"With Windows Azure and other cloud services, we are
able to demonstrate an efficient method of building
software that garners universal acclaim from our
customers for its ease of use and time-savings. We
have completed projects in months, where our peers
have taken years."
Adam Getchel, Director of IT, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
The University of California, Davis has 33,000 students and
multiple undergraduate and graduate colleges on campus,
including the College of Agricultural and Environmental
Sciences. To support the changing campus technology needs
and build streamlined applications for the entire campus, the
college deployed Windows Azure. The platform saves the
college money, promotes innovative application development,
fosters collaboration, provides higher availability, and even
scales for future use among other state universities.
Business Needs
Located in Central California, the University
of California, Davis (UC Davis) has
approximately 33,000 students and
multiple undergraduate and graduate
colleges, including the College of
Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
(the college). The college is unsurpassed
for solving real-world problems in
agriculture, the environment, and human
sciences.
To support the technology environment
and requirements of the entire campus,
the college runs critical campuswide
hardware infrastructure and both studentfocused and teacher-focused programs
and applications. This work is done within
a strict budget for server hardware and
requires building a solid case for allocation
of technology resources.
Managing servers and keeping software
and hardware current for all of these needs
was a challenge for the college. "Our
expertise was in application development
and innovation," says Scott Kirkland,
Enterprise Architect, College of Agricultural
and Environmental Sciences. “Ensuring
everything was running properly was
difficult, time-consuming, and expensive."
The college would have to buy new
hardware and insert it into the data center,
and outages were common. "The whole
university could get knocked out for a few
hours while the IT team developed a
solution," adds Kirkland.
The college was also responsible for
developing programs for students to
evaluate courses and faculty; establishing a
campuswide purchasing system for
supplies; reporting staff salary comparisons;
and tracking university grant money.
Students evaluated their courses with paper
Scantron forms, a method that was timeconsuming and often inaccurate. Financial
data analysis was performed with Microsoft
Office Excel spreadsheets. The campus also
struggled with collaboration between
different colleges due to databases being
owned by different campus groups, with
minimal documentation, poor application
program interfaces, and an arcane process
for obtaining access. To deal with this array
of challenges, the college began to search
for a new solution.
Solution
After the College of Agricultural and
Environmental Sciences analyzed other
solutions from Amazon and Heroku, in 2012
it chose Windows Azure as its solution. “It
[Microsoft] was the natural choice,” says
Kirkland. “We are a .NET shop and were
able to bring up test databases quickly
within our Microsoft environment and that
sealed it for us.”
Initially, the college chose an infrastructure
as a service solution, but upgraded to
platform as a service. The college also uses
Windows Azure Cloud Services and
Windows Azure Web Sites, as well as
Windows Azure SQL Database for its major
projects, and Microsoft Office 365.
The college relies on Windows Azure
features including Windows Azure Blob
Storage for its unstructured data and
Windows Azure Shared Caching to ensure
consistency for users. With Windows SQL
Data Sync, protected data can be pushed
into the cloud, and New Relic is an add-on
to simplify billing. “We’re basically all-in on
Windows Azure,” says Kirkland.
the new Windows Azure benefit in MSDN,
my monthly bill for these campuswide
services seldom exceeds $50/month.”
The college created two new applications
on Windows Azure: an Academic Course
Evaluations application for students and a
campuswide Purchasing System
application for students, faculty, and staff.
With Academic Course Evaluations, 33,000
students can quickly and easily assess the
faculty and courses online. Nearly 10,000
faculty, staff, and students use the
Purchasing System application to buy
notebooks, pens, and laptops online.
“We are able to start a new project, get it
running on Windows Azure later that day,
and point someone toward the site to see
the latest version of the code as we write
it,” says Kirkland. “We have more time to
be innovative in development now.”
Future projects include a financial gift–
processing application that will consolidate
donations ranging from US$150–200
million. “And we will continue to innovate
in Windows Azure,” adds Kirkland.
Benefits
With Windows Azure, the College of
Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
can cut hardware costs; develop more
innovative applications for students and
staff; foster collaboration on campus; and
provide a higher-availability solution that
can scale for future needs—and to include
other California universities.
Saves Thousands of Dollars in Overall
Costs
The college realized significant hardware,
software, and infrastructure savings. “I
estimate we saved at least $60,000 in upfront hardware costs,” says Adam Getchel,
Director of Information Technology (IT) for
the College of Agricultural and
Environmental Sciences. “To get a higher
availability level in Windows Azure, I paid
no more than US$150 per month, and with
This case study is for informational purposes only.
MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published January 2014
Speeds Application Development and
Innovation from Years to Months
The college now spends less time
managing the infrastructure and more
time developing innovative business
applications such as the Academic Course
Evaluations application.
The team is already receiving praise. “With
Windows Azure and other cloud services,
we are able to demonstrate an efficient
method of building software that garners
universal acclaim from our customers for
its ease of use and time-savings. We have
completed projects in months, where our
peers have taken years.”
Improves Collaboration and Skills
The college’s development staff now has a
shared infrastructure that fosters better
collaboration. “Windows Azure makes it
easy for us to keep all the code in one
place and have a common infrastructure;
and increases the skills of our developers.”
Boosts Availability and Scalability
With Service Level Agreement rates of
99.95 percent, campuswide applications
remain available. “A recent analysis
determined Windows Azure uptime was
100 percent this year,” adds Getchel.
“Recently, the University of California
Office of the President looked over our
Purchasing System application. I feel
entirely confident in being able to scale it
up to whatever demand exists,” states
Getchell.