Print Company Boosts Annual Revenue by $8 Million
with Cloud-Based Integration
Customer: Mimeo
Website: www.mimeo.com
Customer Size: 630 employees
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Professional services—
Outsourced managed services
Partner: Nimbo
Website: www.nimbo.com
Customer Profile
Based in New York City, Mimeo is a
leading provider of online printing and
distribution services to customers
worldwide.
Software and Services
 Windows Azure platform
− Windows Azure BizTalk Services
− Windows Azure Service Bus
− Windows Azure SQL Database
“A solution based on Windows Azure BizTalk Services
has gained us an additional $8 million in business each
year. For a company that takes in $100 million in
annual revenue, that’s a significant increase. This is an
incredibly important system for us.”
Mike Barker, Vice President of IT, Mimeo
Mimeo, a provider of online printing services, wanted a solution
that could handle a heavier workload and integrate data from a
new customer that wanted to submit orders using the electronic
data interchange (EDI) standard. For better scalability and EDI
processing capability, the company implemented a solution in
the cloud based on Windows Azure BizTalk Services. As a result,
the company has increased Revenues by US$8 million, gained
more business opportunities, and cut integration time months to
weeks.
Business Needs
For more information about other
Microsoft customer successes, please visit:
www.microsoft.com/casestudies
Based in New York City, Mimeo provides
online, on-demand printing services
through the Internet to customers
worldwide. In the past, the company’s
primary services included printing
documents such as presentations,
brochures, and catalogs. However, that
changed when a Fortune Global 500
company asked Mimeo to handle business
documents such as purchase orders. The
jobs would be submitted using the
electronic data interchange (EDI) standard,
and it would increase the workload during
peak periods from approximately 1,000
orders to 15,000. To take on the project,
Mimeo needed to find a more scalable
solution quickly.
Mimeo also wanted to simplify integration.
Its EDI customers, called trading partners,
worked with a variety of data formats and
technologies. As a result, Mimeo
developers needed to build a separate
integration interface for each new client.
Eventually, a full-time developer was
required to maintain a dozen individual
interfaces.
To solve these challenges, the company
looked at solutions such as IBM Gentran
Integration, but it concluded that the
product would be too time-consuming to
implement and difficult to manage.
In addition to its scalability and integration
requirements, Mimeo needed a solution
that it could deploy quickly with minimal
investment in infrastructure. “We
anticipated that with this new contract, 90
percent of our revenue would come in over
a 30-day period,” says Mike Barker, Vice
President of IT at Mimeo. “I didn’t want to
buy all the additional bandwidth, servers,
and storage that we’d need for that short
time frame.”
Solution
Mimeo turned to Microsoft partner Nimbo,
a specialist in integration and cloud
computing, to help design a new solution.
Nimbo recommended using the Windows
Azure platform and Windows Azure BizTalk
Services for cloud-based EDI processing.
The solution would provide a flexible, highly
scalable integration platform capable of
converting large volumes of data from
virtually any application, including
enterprise resource planning systems, into
the XML format used by Mimeo.
Mimeo and Nimbo began implementing the
solution in May 2012. First, the team created
a standard integration interface that
mapped EDI documents to XML. Next,
Mimeo began a series of rigorous tests that
included a load that successfully ran 20,000
orders in 12 hours. The company went live
with the solution three months later, and it
began processing its first EDI orders in
August 2012.
The solution is highly reliable as well as
scalable. Mimeo runs BizTalk Services in
geographically disparate Microsoft data
centers, which ensures continuous
operations and availability. In addition, the
extended global reach helps Mimeo route
orders more easily between regions.
Mimeo uses the Windows Azure Service
Bus, a messaging framework, to connect
the Windows Azure BizTalk Services layer
to the company’s on-premises printing
service. Mimeo uses a similarly streamlined
process to integrate new trading partners,
which can then easily submit their orders
through a web-based portal.
Benefits
With a solution based on Windows Azure
BizTalk Services, Mimeo has gained
multiple benefits including increased
Revenues, more business opportunities,
and faster integration of new customers.
Increased Annual Revenues by $8 Million
By using cloud-based services to handle
EDI orders, Mimeo has increased its annual
revenue significantly with just one major
contract. “A cloud-based integration
solution based on Windows Azure BizTalk
Services has gained us an additional $8
million in business each year,” says Barker.
“For a company that takes in $100 million
in annual revenue, that’s a significant
increase. This is an incredibly important
system for us.”
integrate new customers,” says Barker.
“With a standard interface based on
Windows Azure BizTalk Services, it now
takes just weeks.”
Barker points out that easier integration
gives Mimeo developers more time to
enhance the company’s core services.
“There are certain things that give a
company like ours value, and building
integration layers is not one of them,” he
says. “By taking advantage of Windows
Azure BizTalk Services, we can focus our
development team on projects that do
give Mimeo value. We’re looking forward
to moving more of our capabilities onto
Windows Azure.”
Creates More Business Opportunities
The company looks forward to more
business opportunities. In addition to its
increased global reach and scalability,
Mimeo can also work more easily with a
wider array of technologies and data
formats. “Our EDI trading partners
appreciate that we’re reliable and that they
can connect to our service without
modifying their existing systems,” says
Barker. “And by increasing our ability to
handle peak fluctuations with ease, we’re
seeing more non-peak orders as well. The
Windows Azure platform is helping us get
a bigger piece of the pie.”
Cuts Integration Time from Months to
Weeks
With a standardized integration solution
based on Windows Azure BizTalk Services,
Mimeo can bring new customers on board
faster. “In the past, it could take months to
This case study is for informational purposes only.
MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published October 2013
Error! Reference source not found.