Microsoft SQL Azure
Customer Solution Case Study
Software Vendor Offers Business Intelligence
in the Cloud as a Competitive Difference
Overview
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Software engineering
Customer Profile
Based in Portland, Oregon, Accumulus
develops subscription management
software to help online businesses
manage complex, recurring billing and
customer life cycles. The company has
five employees.
Business Situation
Accumulus wanted to build a scalable
subscription billing service that used a
relational database to provide business
intelligence for strategic product pricing
and profitable customer relationships.
Solution
Accumulus developed its solution from
the ground up for the Windows Azure
platform and deployed Microsoft SQL
Azure in a multitenant environment for a
scalable subscription billing service.
Benefits
 Achieved desired scalability
 Decreased development time by four
months
 Reduced deployment time by one-half
 Increased competitive advantage
“SQL Azure for business intelligence, combined with
Silverlight for data visualization, is like a one-two punch
for competitive differentiation.”
Gregory Kim, Chief Technology Officer, Accumulus
Accumulus develops subscription management solutions that
help online companies manage complex recurring billing and
customer life-cycle processes. It was founded with the vision of
building a cloud-based service, which would offer the
company—and its customers—a scalable infrastructure.
Accumulus specifically wanted a cloud services provider that
offered a relational database, because the company wanted to
provide business intelligence that only a relational data model
could offer. Accumulus chose Windows Azure and Microsoft SQL
Azure, and achieved the scalability it desired. Accumulus
developed its service four months ahead of what it could with
other providers and deployed it in half the time. In addition, the
company can now differentiate itself by providing customers
with strategic product pricing, full automation, and deep insight
into the recurring customer life cycle.
“Scalability is one of the
main attractions of
Windows Azure. … [Y]ou
can add processing
power in a matter of
minutes—and that’s
important for a new
company with the
potential for enormous
growth.”
Christian Dreke, President and Chief
Executive Officer, Accumulus
Situation
Founded in 2009, Accumulus addresses the
complex subscription management and
customer life-cycle processes that online
companies face with subscription-based
pricing models with its solution, also called
Accumulus. Accumulus provides cloudbased, subscription billing, customer life
cycle management, and business
automation software as a service. It
integrates with customers’ IT infrastructure
and online systems to help businesses
manage everything from customer sign-up
and activation to billing and payment
processing.
The senior leadership team at Accumulus
has a long history and extensive experience
with providing subscription billing services
and, before founding Accumulus, offered
subscription billing software through an
on-premises server infrastructure model
using the Windows Server 2008 operating
system and Microsoft SQL Server 2008
database management software. However,
with Accumulus software, the team wanted
a software-as-a-service model and a cloudbased server infrastructure, instead of the
on-premises model. “We wanted a service
and cloud-based model primarily to meet
our customers’ needs for an agile ondemand solution,” says Christian Dreke,
Chief Executive Officer at Accumulus. “It’s
no secret that the cloud helps you
inherently avoid massive server
infrastructure costs and offers a model that
lets you pay for what you use—and that’s
what our customers wanted, too.”
Accumulus also envisioned a cloud-based
service for its subscription management
solution as a way to offer customers the
ability to more easily scale their online
businesses. “For online companies with
subscription models to grow quickly, they
have to be able to quickly scale up their
subscription billing systems,” explains
Gregory Kim, President and Chief
Technology Officer at Accumulus. “Many
companies don’t have the time and
resources to scale up an on-premises
infrastructure, so offering a solution that
has elasticity and the ability to quickly scale
is key to our value proposition.” In addition
to offering scalability for customers,
Accumulus itself also needed the ability to
scale up. As the young company looked to
the future, it wanted the ability to scale its
solution to accommodate rapid growth and
any number of customers and their billing
data. “It’s critical to success not needing to
worry about the infrastructure that it takes
to grow a software-as-a-service business
like Accumulus,” says Kim.
Accumulus also needed a fully-relational
database in the cloud to deliver business
value to its customers. Beyond just offering
subscription billing management and the
ability to automate the billing and
customer life cycles, Accumulus also offers
business intelligence—a factor that sets the
company apart from its competitors. “We
provide customers with deep insights into
the customer and billing life cycles,”
explains Kim. “It’s a 360-degree view that
we can only achieve by cross-referencing
data with a relational database. Since that
differentiates us in the market, it was a
must for any cloud solution that we chose.”
When Accumulus started to search for a
cloud services provider for its subscription
management solution, the company also
kept in mind its developers’ skillsets,
hoping to find a platform that would
enable it to take advantage of existing
technical knowledge, which was firmly
rooted in Microsoft products and
technologies. Specifically, developers were
experienced with the Microsoft Visual
Studio 2010 Professional development
system and hoped to use the same
development tools with a cloud platform in
an effort to help them get the new product
to market quickly. “We weren’t just building
a new product, we were launching an
entirely new company,” explains Kim.
“Whichever cloud provider we chose, it had
to be one with, at least, a short learning
curve.”
Solution
Figure 1. By using Accumulus,
customers can manage
subscription billing
processes and the entire
customer life cycle through a
cloud-based, rich user
interface.
Accumulus evaluated several cloud services
providers, including Amazon Elastic
Compute Cloud (EC2), Google App Engine,
and the Windows Azure platform. With its
need for a scalable solution, a cloud-based
relational database, and a platform that
would enable developers to use existing
skills, Accumulus chose the Windows Azure
platform. “The Windows Azure platform
was the clear choice for us,” says Christian.
“It met all our business requirements, plus
has the backing of the reliable Microsoft
infrastructure and a full platform as a
service.”
The Windows Azure platform includes the
Windows Azure cloud services operating
system, its development, service hosting,
and service management environment.
Windows Azure provides developers with
on-demand compute and storage, and a
content distribution network to host, scale,
and manage web applications through
Microsoft data centers. The platform also
includes Microsoft SQL Azure, a cloudbased relational database service that is
based on Microsoft SQL Server
technologies and also hosted at Microsoft
data centers.
Subscription Billing Through a Rich User
Interface
The Accumulus user interface is based on
the Microsoft Silverlight browser plug-in, so
it is accessible through any Internet
browser, but has the look and feel of a rich
desktop application. It uses Windows
Identity Foundation to authenticate users
and allows implementation of single sign
on functionality in the future.
Customers can integrate Accumulus
subscription billing support into their
existing IT infrastructure and business
systems through the REST-based
application programming interfaces (APIs)
that Accumulus provides. In addition,
Accumulus offers predesigned, hosted web
pages that were developed using standard
HTML and Microsoft ASP.NET and are
accessed through a self-service portal,
which gives customers the ability to get
started quickly. Once a customer signs up,
Accumulus automatically provisions and
activates an account and screen payment
details for possible fraudulent use, using
recognized industry best practices for
payment processing. Then, Accumulus uses
a sophisticated data model and billing
engine to track and manage transaction
history and customer account details,
automatically calculates fees, processes
payments, and sends billing statements.
Scalable, Asynchronous Architecture and
Storage
Accumulus is hosted in web roles in
Windows Azure and the company can
easily scale up its architecture by adding
new web roles to accommodate the
computational needs of a growing
customer base. The background processing
for the web roles is handled by worker roles
in Windows Azure—a standard architecture
for cloud-based solutions.
In addition, the company built an
asynchronous architecture for the
messaging component of the solution.
Accumulus uses the Queue service in
Windows Azure for persistent messaging
between the web and worker roles, but also
takes advantage of Blob Storage in
Windows Azure for messaging tasks. The
body of each message, which contains
textual data, is stored in blobs, and the rest
of the message is processed through the
Queue service.
“Working with SQL Azure
was just like working
with SQL Server—there
was no additional
learning curve when it
came to building a
relational database for
the cloud.”
Gregory Kim, Chief Technology Officer,
Accumulus
The company’s primary database is SQL
Azure, which it uses to cross-reference
relevant customer, product, payment, and
promotional data in a relational data
structure. Because developers at Accumulus
have decades of combined experience with
SQL Server in the context of a subscription
management solution, the team applied
lessons they had learned from the past to
develop a new database schema for the
cloud-based solution. “We know what
works and what doesn’t when it comes to
SQL Server and subscription billing,”
explains Kim. “We applied our experience
with SQL Server when we developed a
schema for SQL Azure and it was very
straightforward. The new schema
represents best practices from the past, but
in the cloud.”
Accumulus deployed its SQL Azure
database in a multitenant environment so
that customers share the Accumulus
application, but their data is safeguarded
and kept separate from each other. Also, by
partitioning the database around the
various tenants, Accumulus can quickly
scale up its relational storage as it acquires
more customers, or if its customers have
growing data needs.
Because the company stores sensitive
billing and credit card information for its
customers, Accumulus also has a colocated private data center that is
compliant with strict payment card industry
(PCI) standards. The PCI-compliant data
center runs Windows Server 2008 and SQL
Server 2008 and seamlessly interoperates
with the Windows Azure infrastructure that
the company uses for the bulk of its
solution.
Benefits
As a result of using Windows Azure and
SQL Azure, Accumulus achieved the
scalability it desired for its compute
processing and storage needs. Also,
customers have the scalability that they
need to accommodate growing businesses.
Developers at Accumulus were able to use
their existing skills and familiar
programming models to build Accumulus
and deployed the subscription billing
service in a shortened timeframe. In
addition, the company can differentiate
itself among competitors by providing
strategic recurring product pricing, full
automation, and deep insights into the
entire customer life cycle.
Achieved Scalability and Extended
Scalability to Customers
By using Windows Azure and SQL Azure,
Accumulus achieved critical scalability for
both its computing and storage needs.
“Scalability is one of the main attractions of
Windows Azure,” says Dreke. “With web
roles and worker roles, you can add
processing power in a matter of minutes as
opposed to days or weeks —and that’s
important for a new company with the
potential for enormous growth.” The
company can also add partitions to its
multitenant SQL Azure database, scaling up
for increased storage needs.
“We saved
approximately four
months by developing
our solution for
Windows Azure and SQL
Azure, representing a 25
percent productivity
increase compared to if
we had used Amazon
EC2 or Google App
Engine.”
Christian Dreke, President and Chief
Operating Officer, Accumulus
In addition, customers can also rely on
Accumulus and the Windows Azure
platform to scale their subscription billing
processes as demand dictates. As
Accumulus customers expand, Accumulus
can add processing power and storage
capacity to accommodate those needs.
Shortened Development Time
Developers at Accumulus drew from their
existing skill sets when they developed the
cloud-based solution, which helped speed
the development time for the new service.
Developers used Visual Studio 2010 and a
familiar programming model to build the
Accumulus solution, helping to speed
development time. “We saved
approximately four months by developing
our solution for Windows Azure and SQL
Azure, representing a 25 percent
productivity increase compared to if we
had used Amazon EC2 or Google App
Engine,” says Dreke.
In addition, employees at Accumulus have
intimate knowledge of using SQL Server for
subscription billing software and were able
to quickly apply that know-how to the
company’s SQL Azure database. “Working
with SQL Azure was just like working with
SQL Server—there was no additional
learning curve when it came to building a
relational database for the cloud,” says Kim.
“As a result, our development time was
relatively fast, even for a sophisticated
solution like Accumulus.”
Reduced Time to Market by 50 Percent
with Quick Deployment
By using Windows Azure and SQL Azure,
Accumulus can deploy its service in half the
time that it could if it used another cloud
services provider. “We can develop locally
and then immediately deploy to the cloud
with Windows Azure,” says Dreke. “Whereas
with other providers, we would have had to
deal with infrastructure management tasks,
with Windows Azure, we have a
comprehensive platform as a service that
we can use to deploy our service twice as
fast.” Coupled with the shortened
development time, Accumulus was able to
reduce its initial time to market and will be
able to quickly go to market with new
features and enhancements in the future.
Increased Competitive Advantage
Accumulus recognizes that today’s
recurring businesses need deep insight into
customer acquisition, billing, and retention
to implement strategic pricing and build
efficient, profitable, and long-lasting
customer relationships. At the heart of its
competitive advantage is its use of SQL
Azure, which gives the company the
relational database that is so vital to the
business intelligence it offers. “The ability
to have a relational data model where we
can cross-reference all our data and yield
business intelligence for our customers is
critical to our success,” says Kim. Also, by
using Microsoft Silverlight for its user
interface, Accumulus can transform the
data from SQL Azure into rich
visualizations. “SQL Azure for business
intelligence, combined with Silverlight for
data visualization, is like a one-two punch
for competitive differentiation,” explains
Kim.
For More Information
Windows Azure Platform
For more information about Microsoft
products and services, call the Microsoft
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information using the World Wide Web,
go to:
www.microsoft.com
The Windows Azure platform provides
developers the functionality to build
applications that span from consumer to
enterprise scenarios. The key components
of the Windows Azure platform are:
For more information about Accumulus
products and services, call (503) 7700265 or visit the website at:
www.accumulus.com
Windows Azure. Windows Azure is the
development, service hosting, and
service management environment for the
Windows Azure platform. 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.

To learn more, visit:
www.windowsazure.com
www.sqlazure.com
Software and Services
Windows Azure Platform
− Microsoft SQL Azure
− Windows Azure
 Microsoft Server Product Portfolio
− Microsoft SQL Server 2008
− Windows Server 2008

This case study is for informational purposes only.
MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published April 2011
Microsoft Visual Studio
− Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
Professional
 Technologies
− Microsoft ASP.NET
− Microsoft Silverlight
− Windows Identity Foundation
