Leading Benelux IT Firm Builds Better Software
Faster by Developing on Microsoft Azure Platform
Customer: Ordina
Website: www.ordina.nl
Customer Size: 2,900 employees
Country or Region: Netherlands
Industry: Professional services—IT
services
Customer Profile
Ordina, a leading IT services provider in
the Netherlands, solves challenges for
multiple industries, including financial
services, government, healthcare, and
industrial.
Software and Services
 Microsoft Azure platform
− Microsoft Azure App Service
− Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines
− Microsoft Azure Virtual Network
 Microsoft Visual Studio
− Microsoft Visual Studio 2013
− Microsoft Visual Studio Application
Insights
− Microsoft Visual Studio Lab
Management 2013
− Microsoft Visual Studio Online
− Microsoft Visual Studio Team
Foundation Server 2013
− Release Management for Visual
Studio 2013
For more information about other
Microsoft customer successes, please visit:
www.microsoft.com/casestudies
“Using Azure with Visual Studio stimulates innovation.
It helps developers discover things that they otherwise
wouldn’t if they had to spend time setting up physical
infrastructure.”
Paul Mastwijk, Service Manager, Ordina
To get applications into production faster, Ordina wanted to
eliminate infrastructure as a bottleneck. The company was
frustrated by the time it took to set up test environments, which
ranged from weeks to months. Ordina knew there had to be a
better way, so it began a journey to transform application
lifecycle management (ALM) in the cloud with the Microsoft
Azure platform and Visual Studio Online. Deployment now takes
minutes, costs have dropped by up to 80 percent, and, best of
all, developers have more time and money for innovation.
Business needs and IT collide
A top IT services provider in the
Netherlands, Ordina has been
transforming business and technology
processes throughout the region for more
than 40 years. The company is now taking
a leading role in the evolution of software
development.
In addition to creating software, for itself
and others, the company provides
infrastructures for customers. As a result, it
has gained a bird’s-eye view of
challenges—and infrastructure constraints
topped the list of problems it wanted to
solve.
Ordina and its customers were driven by
the business imperatives to get products
to market faster and deliver innovative
solutions, but those goals were often
thwarted by infrastructure requirements.
This was especially true with more
complicated projects. For example,
customers might request separate
environments for application lifecycle
management (ALM) processes such as test,
QA, and development, but that could
entail more time and higher costs. To put
that into perspective, a single environment
used for testing was costing approximately
€2,500 (US$2,690) each month, and it had
been running for more than a year.
“We’d have to figure out the memory, CPU,
and storage required, and then it gets even
more complex if you’re talking about
domain controllers and multiple servers,”
says David Valera, ICT Consultant at Ordina.
“It could take a couple of months to do all
that, and it cost a lot. And in a world where
you want to be able to make fast decisions
and develop quickly, that’s a lot of time to
set up an environment.”
ALM processes evolve
To overcome ALM challenges, Ordina
decided to transition from a managed
datacenter to the public cloud, and it chose
Microsoft Azure as its cloud platform. “It’s
really hard to beat Azure on cost, and it has
the scale and capabilities we need,” says
Valera. “You see what’s possible now, and
every time we check there is a new feature,
and then we think of another possibility.”
Those future possibilities include a
complete ALM process in the cloud, from
defining requirements to deployment.
Ordina decided to focus on test and build
processes as the first step in its transition to
Azure. It uses Azure Virtual Machines, and
developers connect through a VPN with
Azure Virtual Network. This secure solution
provides optimal flexibility for developers,
who work with a variety of technology
platforms and programming languages,
including Windows, Oracle, and Java-based
applications.
Equally important, setting up environments
on Azure gives Ordina nearly unlimited
freedom to quickly set up not only separate
environments for different ALM processes,
but also environments for testing
applications on multiple versions of an
operating system.
The way Ordina and its customers use the
Microsoft Visual Studio development
system is also changing. For example, in the
past, many used Visual Studio Team
Foundation Server only for source control.
Now, developers have moved from source
control with a simple build to using the
development system’s tools for Agile
Project Management processes and Cl
Builds scripts. They are also automating
releases with Release Management for
Visual Studio 2013, and automating testing
with Visual Studio 2013 Lab Management.
In addition, Ordina uses Visual Studio
Online to run performance tests on Azure,
and Visual Studio Application Insights to
monitor software performance.
The ALM tools have been particularly
helpful in more complicated projects, such
as developing a public-sector application
that will be used to handle legal requests.
The web-based software includes multiple
applications such as Microsoft Dynamics
CRM, SharePoint, and various portals and
services. Ordina reports that Application
Insights and Visual Studio online have
streamlined and simplified the complex
project.
In addition to moving its ALM processes to
Azure, Ordina is running its own website
on Microsoft Azure App Service.
Time and costs down,
innovation up
By moving to an integrated development
environment that includes Microsoft Azure
and Visual Studio ALM tools, Ordina is
dramatically cutting development time and
costs, which can now be spent on
innovation.
Eliminates weeks of setup
In the past, it could take weeks, if not
months, to set up test infrastructures. Now,
all it takes is a single meeting. “For
complex situations it would take 2 to 10
weeks or more to set up a test
environment,” says Valera. “Now we have a
single planning meeting, and the servers
are running on Azure in a couple of
minutes. Making the decision takes longer
than opening the Azure portal and
creating the servers.”
This case study is for informational purposes only.
MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published April 2015
Cuts infrastructure costs by 80 percent
Eliminating physical infrastructure by
moving to the cloud dramatically cuts
costs as well as time. As a result, Ordina
and customers can afford to scale out to
more extensive testing and get
applications into production even faster.
“One of our projects that had cost €2,500 a
month running in a hosted datacenter
switched to Azure and Visual Studio ALM
tools,” says Paul Mastwijk, Service Manager
at Ordina. “They’re now running two test
environments and about 18 servers in the
cloud that they can spin up or shut down
whenever they want, and it costs around
€500 a month. That’s an 80 percent cost
reduction.”
Unleashes innovation
It’s not just about freeing up time and
money—better ALM processes also
liberate developers to do what they do
best. “What I see with the projects I’m
working on is that using Azure with Visual
Studio stimulates innovation,” says
Mastwijk. “It helps developers discover
things that they otherwise wouldn’t if they
had to spend time setting up physical
infrastructure. If I need another
environment, I can just create it instantly
myself in the cloud.”