1. Microsoft SQL Data Services
Customer Solution Case Study
Forms Automation Company Uses Cloud
Storage to Lower Mobile Data Access Costs
Overview
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Professional services—High tech
Customer Profile
Formotus provides a fast, easy, and
affordable way for companies to deploy
rich business applications to Windows
Mobile® devices. Based in Bellevue,
Washington, the company employs
27 people.
Business Situation
Formotus wanted customers to have a low-
cost, standards-based data storage service
that would enable small businesses with-
out big storage infrastructures to use its
mobile forms service.
Solution
Formotus designed its offering so that it
works out of the box with Microsoft® SQL
Data Services as a cloud-based data
storage alternative for customers needing
affordable, scalable storage for mobile
business applications.
Benefits
Affordable mobile data solutions for
customers
Rapid deployment
Data access from anywhere, any time
Pay-as-you-grow scalability
“Customers … now have a cost-effective way to
connect a storage infrastructure to the forms that we
deliver. SQL Data Services is the perfect complement
to Formotus Software + Services.”
Joseph Verschueren, Cofounder and Chief Executive Officer, Formotus
Formotus helps make mobile workers more productive by giving
them ready access to line-of-business data. Using Microsoft® Office
InfoPath® 2007 and Formotus Software + Services, companies can
quickly and cost-effectively deploy forms-based business
applications that run on Windows Mobile® devices. Formotus
recommends Microsoft SQL Data Services, a cloud-based data
storage service, as a safe, cost-effective data storage solution. By
choosing SQL Data Services with Formotus Software + Services,
customers can get mobile applications up and running in a day,
eliminating the up-front cost of creating a massive storage
infrastructure and expensive software development work. Field
workers get anytime access to business data without the need to
establish virtual private network connections. Businesses get pay-
as-you-grow, on-demand scalability without the capital expense of
physical storage.

2. Situation
Many companies have focused their auto-
mation and productivity efforts on office
information workers, while workers in the
field are often cut off from corporate systems
and left to use paper-based forms and
manual processes to do their jobs. Eager to
automate the ”last mile” of their operations,
many businesses are now outfitting field
workers with handheld mobile devices and
software applications that provide the same
automated efficiencies enjoyed at the office.
Formotus, of Bellevue, Washington, is
dedicated to helping companies of all sizes
provide their mobile workers with fast, easy
access to business data. Using Formotus
Software + Services, organizations can
quickly generate and deploy business
applications to Windows Mobile® devices in
the field.
Formotus takes advantage of the Microsoft®
Office InfoPath® 2007 information-gathering
program to deliver its services. A nontechni-
cal business user can create an electronic
form on his or her desktop computer using
Office InfoPath 2007, and then upload it to a
Formotus account. Formotus then converts
the desktop form to a Formotus form that will
run on any Windows Mobile device. Formotus
forms can pull and push data from any data
source using XML Web services. Businesses
do not have to write a single line of code to
Web-enable their line-of-business programs.
When Formotus designed its service, it was
committed to XML Web services as a data-
exchange standard and looked for an Internet
data storage service that customers could
use. “When we started in 2005, there weren’t
many data stores that exposed Web
services,” says Joseph Verschueren,
Cofounder and Chief Executive Officer of
Formotus. “Salesforce.com, Amazon, and a
few other companies claimed that their
solutions were exposed to Web services, but
many were too complex to access from Office
InfoPath 2007. If you wanted to access data
on mobile devices, you had to hire a
developer to expose those services.”
Consequently, nearly all Formotus customers
stored data on expensive infrastructures
consisting of on-premise database software,
servers, and storage. “It was a very high
barrier of entry for small businesses, which
limited our ability to sell into that market,”
says Adriana Neagu, Cofounder and Chief
Technology Officer for Formotus.
Plus, companies with on-premise storage had
to have field employees log on to corporate
databases using virtual private network (VPN)
connections to upload and download data
throughout the workday. The procedure was
complex and time-consuming, and often
required technical assistance.
Solution
In early 2008, Formotus learned about
Microsoft SQL Data Services, part of the
Azure™ Services Platform. The Azure Services
Platform is an Internet-scale cloud services
platform hosted in Microsoft data centers,
which provides an operating system and a set
of developer services for creating a range of
flexible, cost-effective solutions. SQL Data
Services is a scalable, distributed relational
database service in the cloud that is used for
storing and querying structured and unstruc-
tured data.
“We liked the service’s strong adherence to
XML standards, which would enable us to
connect to SQL Data Services without any
code modifications to our software,” Neagu
says. “It would also enable our customers to
build mobile database applications without
any coding. In the cloud, it’s all about
interoperability, and SQL Data Services is a
very good cloud citizen. Microsoft has taken
the XML standard very seriously.”
“It’s all about
interoperability, and SQL
Data Services is a very
good cloud citizen.
Microsoft has taken the
XML standard very
seriously.”
Adriana Neagu, Cofounder and Chief
Technology Officer, Formotus

3. Shortly after Microsoft announced SQL Data
Services, Formotus created a proof-of-
concept. “Our development work consisted of
opening Office InfoPath 2007 and creating a
new data connector for SQL Data Services,”
Neagu says. “We simply entered the SQL
Data Services Web address and specified the
entity that we wanted to query. That was it.”
Formotus customers sign up for SQL Data
Services through Microsoft when they open a
Formotus account. Instead of field workers
accessing data from on-premise corporate
databases, they pull data from SQL Data
Services.
Formotus expects many of its customers to
adopt SQL Data Services. Visiting nurses,
inspectors, salespeople, maintenance
personnel, service technicians, delivery
drivers, and any other employee who fills out
forms in the field can benefit from Formotus
Software + Services and SQL Data Services.
For example, one Formotus customer that
delivers home heating oil has 20 trucks that
travel around one western state making
deliveries. The company replaced clipboards
and paperwork with ruggedized Windows
Mobile devices, Formotus forms, and data
stored in SQL Data Services. After making a
delivery, the driver completes an electronic
form, captures the customer’s digital
signature, and then submits the form to
headquarters, which bills the customer even
before the driver returns.
Visiting nurses working for another Formotus
customer take vital statistics in a patient’s
home, record results on a Formotus form,
and then transmit the form to SQL Data
Services for storage. The nurses can also use
their Windows Mobile devices to pull
information needed to complete the form
from a hospital SharePoint® site. They can
then post the form to another site on
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
where built-in workflows forward the form to a
physician or billing department.
An equipment maintenance company uses
SQL Data Services to give maintenance staff
access to GPS location data that is too
voluminous to store on handheld devices.
When a maintenance technician enters the
address of the facility to be serviced, the
Formotus application automatically
downloads and populates the GPS
coordinates from the SQL Data Services
cloud.
Benefits
By offering customers Microsoft SQL Data
Services as a data storage option, Formotus
Using the Formotus software-plus-
services delivery model, field workers
complete forms on Windows Mobile
devices using data stored in
Microsoft SQL Data Services. They
can then submit the forms to Office
SharePoint Server 2007 sites.

4. is able to greatly expand its market to include
small businesses, which need an affordable
way for field workers to access company
data. Formotus was able to connect its
service to SQL Data Services with very little
work, and customers can do the same to gain
access to any kind of data, any place, and at
any time.
Affordable Mobile Data Solutions for
Customers
Using Formotus forms and SQL Data
Services, companies of any size can create
affordable mobile data solutions. “We’re
excited about SQL Data Services, because it
solves a similar problem on the back end that
we solve on the front end,” Verschueren says.
“Customers, especially small businesses, now
have a cost-effective way to connect a
storage infrastructure to the forms that we
deliver. SQL Data Services is the perfect
complement to Formotus Software +
Services.”
“It’s a huge benefit to us to give our
customers access to this kind of service,”
Neagu adds. “Our partners will be able to sell
a hosted solution for a small monthly fee,
instead of selling an expensive database
server that requires monthly maintenance.
It’s an inexpensive way to solve a problem
that small businesses have been unable to
solve, and it helps us penetrate the small
business market.”
Rapid Deployment
Because SQL Data Services is based on open
standards and Web services, it worked “out
of the box” with the Formotus service and
with Office InfoPath 2007. “We didn’t need to
make any changes to our code to use SQL
Data Services,” Verschueren says. “Within an
hour, we created a test form that requested
data from SQL Data Services, added rich
information, and submitted the information to
a SharePoint site. With virtually no develop-
ment cost, we added a significant enhance-
ment to our service.”
Nor is there development work for Formotus
customers to use SQL Data Services. Custo-
mers simply sign up for Formotus, make
minor modifications to a Formotus template,
deploy it to their Windows Mobile device, and
sign up for SQL Data Services. Customers can
create their own form using Office InfoPath
2007, use one of several Formotus forms, or
have a Formotus partner create one for them.
“Without Formotus and SQL Data Services,
companies would have to hire developers
and spend thousands of dollars creating a
custom application and building data
connectors to expensive back-end databases.
With our solution, a customer can push and
pull data to their Windows Mobile devices
within a day,” Verschueren says.
Data Access from Anywhere, Any Time
Using the Formotus service, mobile workers
have access to forms and data any time, from
anywhere, without the inconvenience of
establishing VPN connections. Authorized
users can also easily modify forms without
contacting the IT department or hiring
programmers to change the database
schema. “With SQL Data Services, mobile
workers have easier access to line-of-
business application data,” Neagu says. “It’s
much easier to connect to data in a cloud
than to data behind a corporate firewall.”
Pay-as-You-Grow Scalability
Customers can start with a form that requires
only a small amount of data and expand the
data capacity of the form as their business
needs evolve. There is no need to make
modifications to the form or to the data
connectors. “SQL Data Services scales to fit
our customers’ needs,” Verschueren says.
“Both Formotus and SQL Data Services are
services with no up-front costs. Companies
can start out small, with no capital invest-
“We didn’t need to make
any changes to our code
to use SQL Data Services.
… With virtually no
development cost, we
added a significant
enhancement to our
service.”
Joseph Verschueren, Cofounder and Chief
Executive Officer, Formotus

5. ment. With the storage infrastructure in the
cloud, companies can explore new ways to
streamline their business processes without
incurring big up-front costs. They pay only for
the resources that they use.”
Azure Services Platform
The Azure Services Platform provides an
excellent foundation for expanding product
and service offerings. The Azure components
include:
 Windows Azure. Windows Azure is a
development, run-time, and control
environment that is scalable, flexible,
secure, and interoperable.
 Microsoft SQL Services. SQL Services
is a suite of cloud-based SQL Server data
platform capabilities. The first of these
capabilities is SQL Data Services, which
offers Internet-facing database service for
relational queries.
 Microsoft .NET Services. Microsoft
.NET Services is a suite of Web services for
customers with integration and business-
to-business collaboration requirements.
These services include workflow, access
control, and service bus connectivity.
 Live Services. Live Services is a
comprehensive set of Web services that
represent the core functionality of
Microsoft Live Search and the Windows
Live network of Internet services, including
Windows Live Messenger.
To learn more about the Azure Services
Platform portfolio, go to:
www.azure.com
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft
products and services, call the Microsoft
Sales Information Center at (800) 426-
9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft
Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-
2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-
hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone
(TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in
the United States or (905) 568-9641 in
Canada. Outside the 50 United States and
Canada, please contact your local
Microsoft subsidiary. To access information
using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com
For more information about Formotus
products and services, call (206) 973-
5060 or visit the Web site at:
www.formotus.com
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT
MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS
SUMMARY.
Document published January 2009

6. Microsoft SQL Services
Microsoft SQL Services extends SQL Server
capabilities to the cloud as Web-based
services. SQL Services enables organizations
to store data from structured, semistructured,
and unstructured documents. SQL Services
will deliver a rich set of integrated services for
relational database, search, reporting,
analytics, and data synchronization with
mobile users, remote offices, and business
partners. The first of these SQL Services is
called SQL Data Services, which offers
database services in the cloud.
For more information about SQL Services, go
to:
www.microsoft.com/azure/sql.mspx
www.microsoft.com/sql/dataservices

7. Microsoft SQL Services
Microsoft SQL Services extends SQL Server
capabilities to the cloud as Web-based
services. SQL Services enables organizations
to store data from structured, semistructured,
and unstructured documents. SQL Services
will deliver a rich set of integrated services for
relational database, search, reporting,
analytics, and data synchronization with
mobile users, remote offices, and business
partners. The first of these SQL Services is
called SQL Data Services, which offers
database services in the cloud.
For more information about SQL Services, go
to:
www.microsoft.com/azure/sql.mspx
www.microsoft.com/sql/dataservices