1. Windows Azure
Customer Solution Case Study
Job-Listing Web Site Scales Up
Solution, Reduces Costs by More
Than U.S.$500,000
Overview “With Windows Azure we’re saving up to
Country or Region: Mexico
Industry: Online job board $400,000 in hardware costs, plus at least
a couple hundred thousand dollars for the
Customer Profile
A full service job-listing Web site staff that it would take to run that
based in Mexico,
OCCMundial.com gathers more infrastructure.”
than 15 million unique visitors The job-listing Web site OCCMundial.com
and posts more than 600,000
positions at more than 7,000
connects job seekers with opportunities and
companies each year. optimizes hiring processes for businesses.
Business Situation
Headquartered in Mexico City, OCCMundial.com
To scale up its OCCMatch helps to fill more than 600,000 positions a year in
algorithm to match more
resumes and job listings,
Mexican and international job markets. To provide
OCCMundial.com needed to better value to its customers, the company
increase its computing capacity
while avoiding the costs of
developed a recommendation system it calls
expanding its physical OCCMatch to match job openings to candidate
infrastructure.
resumes. OCCMundial.com wanted to scale up its
Solution OCCMatch recommendation system to connect
After evaluating solutions from
Google and Amazon,
1.5 million resumes with 80,000 job listings, but its
OCCMundial.com decided on existing computing infrastructure lacked capacity
the Windows Azure™ operating
system to host OCCMatch on
to meet the demand. To avoid significant
the Internet in Microsoft® data hardware and other infrastructure costs,
centers.
OCCMundial.com used the Windows Azure™
Benefits platform to host OCCMatch through a Microsoft®
• Easy scalability
• Reduced costs
data center, providing easy solution scalability
• Enhanced customer value and enhancing value for OCCMundial.com
customers.
3. “For OCCMatch to Situation managers can post listings and
Headquartered in Mexico City, search resumes.
grow like we OCCMundial.com provides an
online link between job seekers To better connect applicants and
expect it to, we and opportunities, while opportunities, the company
would have had to optimizing hiring processes for launched a recommendation
businesses. The largest online job system called OCCMatch, an
expand our current site in the Mexican employment algorithm that uses data mining
market, OCCMundial.com has and other models to match job
infrastructure at internationalized its job listings openings to candidate resumes
least tenfold. It through its association with based on parameters such as
DirectEmployers.com and location, job requirements, skills,
would be almost JobCentral.com, both based in and education. In the first three
the United States. months after the launch, the
impossible to do OCCMundial.com gathers more OCCMatch recommendation
that cost- than 15 million unique visitors system helped 45,000 users,
annually, and posts more than matching resumes and job
effectively.” 600,000 positions each year at opportunities more than 10,000
more than 7,000 companies times every day.
inside and outside of Mexico.
Although OCCMatch worked
OCCMundial.com is built on successfully, constraints in
Microsoft® ASP.NET technology computing and storage capacity
and hosted through the limited the recommendation
company’s own data center, an system’s power. The company
infrastructure of several dozen needed to scale up OCCMatch to
physical servers running on the connect as many as 1.5 million
Windows Server® 2008 operating resumes and 80,000 job
system and using Microsoft SQL opportunities; to do so, it would
Server® 2005 data management need significantly more
software to manage core content computing and storage capacity
information on the site. than it had available. “For
OCCMatch to grow like we
The company developed visual expect it to, we would have had
search features based on the to expand our current
Windows® Internet Explorer® 8 infrastructure at least tenfold,”
Internet browser, using the says Eduardo Pierdant, Chief
Microsoft Silverlight™ 2.0 browser Technical Officer at
plug-in on the home page to OCCMundial.com. “It would be
display job listings. On the site almost impossible to do that cost-
home page, job seekers can effectively.”
search through and apply for
more than 65,000 open job OCCMundial.com knew that
opportunities every day. On OCCMatch would help to
separate pages, candidates can differentiate its services and
post resumes, and hiring provide better value for its
customers. It needed to expand
4. After evaluating several cloud
computing solutions, including
Google App Engine and Amazon
Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2),
OCCMundial.com chose the
Windows Azure™ cloud services
operating system. Windows
Azure is a development, service
hosting, and service management
environment hosted on the
Internet in Microsoft data centers.
The company had developed the
OCCMatch recommendation
system with the Microsoft Visual
C#® development tool using the
Microsoft Visual Studio®
development system, so
OCCMundial.com developers
could easily implement and scale
OCCMatch in the Windows Azure
OCCMatch while avoiding the environment. “We are very used
costs associated with developing to Visual Studio,” says Eduardo
and managing a complex Flores, Development Manager at
technology infrastructure. At the OCCMundial.com. “Developing
same time, it wanted to empower for Windows Azure is almost the
its developers to continually same as what we were already
enhance the algorithm and deliver doing.”
even more detailed job matches.
“With the Solution
OCCMundial.com is using a
software-plus-services model to
computing power OCCMundial.com elected to connect OCCMatch with the Web
deploy OCCMatch using a site. For its Web site
of Windows Azure, MapReduce framework, a infrastructure, the company has
software framework originally
we can provide introduced by Google and widely
deployed Windows Server 2008,
SQL Server 2005, and Silverlight
better service for used on the open source 2.0 in its on-premises data
community, which supports center, and it is using Windows
more customers parallel distributed computing of Azure computing and storage
large data sets on clusters of
than we ever could computers. The company
resources to run the OCCMatch
algorithm.
with our current planned to host the framework on
an external, Internet-based Running as many as 200
infrastructure.” network, an application delivery instances of Windows Azure
system sometimes referred to as simultaneously, OCCMundial.com
Eduardo Flores, Development
Manager, OCCMundial.com “cloud computing.” can execute millions of
5. OCCMatch operations in parallel— OCCMatch up to three times a
with as much processing power week and match up to 1.5 million
as needed. The system resumes against 80,000 job
compresses and uploads files to offers. And with the ability to
a Blob Storage container, and easily scale up computing
then it selects information from capacity, the company has the
resumes and job listings to be flexibility to enhance the
processed based on specific OCCMatch algorithm.
criteria.
Reduced Costs
The resulting matches are With Windows Azure,
distributed to other parts of the OCCMundial.com expects to
Web site, and e-mail alerts are avoid more than U.S.$500,000 in
automatically sent to job capital investments and
applicants or hiring managers infrastructure support costs. The
(Figure 1). With the vast company can pay for storage and
computing power and high computing power as it needs it,
availability of Windows Azure, rather than maintaining a peak-
OCCMundial.com can process up load infrastructure that would be
Figure 1 – When the to 1.5 million resumes two to underutilized during off-peak
OCCMatch three times per week. periods.
recommendation system
connects job openings to “With Windows Azure we’re
candidate resumes, match Benefits saving up to $400,000 in
alerts are automatically By hosting its OCCMatch hardware costs, plus at least a
sent to job applicants or recommendation system with couple hundred thousand dollars
hiring managers by e-mail. Windows Azure, for the staff that it would take to
OCCMundial.com has enhanced run that infrastructure,” says
its ability to provide better service Pierdant. “We can use that
to more customers, without investment instead to focus on
having to face challenges such as product development.”
hardware costs or infrastructure
reliability. The company can scale Enhanced Customer Value
up OCCMatch easily and Instead of working on
efficiently, enhance the job- infrastructure and scalability
seeking and recruiting experience issues, OCCMundial.com can
for its customers, and reduce focus on developing a more
costs, even as the computing complex algorithm, which will
requirements of its solution grow. provide more targeted matches
between resumes and job
Easy Scalability listings. That will improve the job
When it was hosted on-premises candidates’ experience and
at OCCMundial.com’s data reduce hiring time and costs for
center, OCCMatch could recruiters. “With the computing
compute 25,000 resumes against power of Windows Azure, we can
20,000 job offers. Using Windows provide better service for more
Azure, the company can now run customers than we ever could
6. For More Information with our current infrastructure,” Windows Azure
For more information about says Flores. Platform
Microsoft products and The Windows Azure platform
services, call the Microsoft provides an excellent foundation
Sales Information Center at for expanding online product and
(800) 426-9400. In Canada, call service offerings. The main
the Microsoft Canada components include:
Information Centre at (877) • Windows Azure. Windows Azure
568-2495. Customers in the is the development, service
United States and Canada who hosting, and service
are deaf or hard-of-hearing can management environment for
reach Microsoft text telephone the Windows Azure platform.
(TTY/TDD) services at (800) Windows Azure provides
892-5234. Outside the 50 developers with on-demand
United States and Canada, compute and storage to host,
please contact your local scale, and manage Web
Microsoft subsidiary. To access applications on the Internet
information using the World through Microsoft data
Wide Web, go to: centers. In addition, Windows
www.microsoft.com Azure serves developers’
connectivity needs through
For more information about the following services.
OCCMundial.com products and 〉 The Service Bus connects
services, visit the Web site at:
services and applications
www.occ.com.mx
across network
boundaries to help
Additional Resources:
View: Download: Windows developers build
Azure Platform Training Kit distributed applications.
〉 The Access Control Service
View: Architecting and
provides federated,
Developing for Windows Azure
claims-based access
control for REST Web
services.
• Microsoft SQL Azure. Microsoft
SQL Azure offers the first
cloud-based relational and
self-managed database
service built on Microsoft SQL
Server 2008 technologies.
Software and Services • Technologies
• Windows Azure − Microsoft ASP.NET
− Blob Storage
• Microsoft Visual Studio
− Microsoft Visual C#
− Microsoft Visual Studio
This case study is for informational
purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO
WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN
THIS SUMMARY.
Document published November 2009
7. To learn more about the Windows
Azure platform, visit:
www.windowsazure.com