ISV Video: NewsGator Moves 3 Million Blog Posts Per Day on Windows Azure

Through its Datawire service, NewsGator aggregates approximately 1.6 million content sources on an hourly basis. This service used to be housed in their own data center; NewsGator recently moved this service to Windows Azure.

The VP of Mobile and Data Services, Walker Fenton, and Software Developer Brian Reischl describe tips and tricks of moving this high availability service which aggregates more than 3.25 million posts per day.

Video Link: NewsGator Moves 3 Million Blog Posts Per Day on Azure.

The team tells me how they started with an existing ASP.NET application, but during the transition had to change how they thought about several facets of the solution – from technical aspects of storage and network connectivity to the business model.

Very important to them was team members need no longer carry a pager to handle issues in the day-to-day operations of the data center, such as hard drive failures. Brian says, "No one gets woken up in the middle of the night because an Azure hard drive has failed."

Walker describes the newness of the cost model — how seemingly small transactions can add up. He also talks of the deployment efficiencies, and how they no longer have the "one weird box" problem -- where one machine in the data center is somehow different from the rest, and always causing headaches around deployment, scalability, and maintenance.

About NewsGator

NewsGator, who has earned the ISV Gold Competency, offers award-winning enterprise social computing solutions. Direct integration with SharePoint’s business collaboration platform means NewsGator Social Sites runs hassle-free on thousands of organizations’ existing computing infrastructures. Capabilities familiar to consumer-oriented social software, such as microblogging, activity streams, social profiles, mobile clients, and expertise location, ensure users extract real business value from collaboration and knowledge management activities.

Founded in 2004 and with over 2.5 million paid users, NewsGator serves Fortune 200 and government knowledge workers across the globe – including Accenture, Biogen Idec, Charles Schwab, Deloitte, Edelman, Fujitsu, General Mills, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Kraft Foods, Novartis, Unisys Corporation, the United States Air Force, and the United States Army.

Together, SharePoint and Social Sites are propelling the future of productivity - https://www.newsgator.com.

Other ISV Videos

For videos on Windows Azure Platform, see:

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• Azure Email-Enables Lists, Low-Cost Storage for SharePoint
• Credit Card Processing for Windows Phone 7 on Windows Azure
• Crowd-Sourcing Public Sector App for Windows Phone, Azure
• Food Buster Game Achieves Scalability with Windows Azure
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For other videos about independent software vendors (ISVs):

• Quark Extends SharePoint for Dynamic Publishing
• ProModel Adds Simulation, Visualization to Microsoft Project
• Slingbox Maker Sling Media Describes Cross-Platform Commitment to Silverlight
• Game Design and Development in Silverlight for Windows Phone 7
• Thumb-Driven Workflow on Windows 7 Slates from Blue Dot Solutions

Bruce D. KyleISV Architect Evangelist | Microsoft Corporation