Rearchitecting the Microsoft licensing platform for Azure IT Showcase Article

January 2016

The new system needed to be flexible enough to scale up to eventually support a massive user base. That is why a cloud-based solution using Azure was chosen.

The Microsoft Enterprise Commerce team is rearchitecting Microsoft volume licensing to support a “cloud first, mobile first” business model. Microsoft chose Microsoft Azure as the new platform for volume licensing because it provides the scalability and agility that Microsoft needs now and in the future. From the new system, Microsoft expects to gain increased agility, developer efficiency, user enhancements, worldwide scale, support for further growth, and reduced application maintenance costs.

Aligning licensing with the new business model Microsoft is redesigning volume licensing to support its business as the company moves toward selling services and devices in addition to software licenses. The new volume licensing platform must be much more lightweight and low-touch, must support higher volumes, and must be consumptionbased instead of license-based. During this shift, Microsoft had to consider the following factors: 

Five different software versions currently serve various user bases.

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A data center that supports licensing must be closed.

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Traffic volumes experience seasonal fluctuation.

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Microsoft cloud adoption goals must be met.

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In the near term, as Microsoft migrates users from other platforms, accounts, and geographic areas to the new platform, the platform should grow exponentially.

This is another example of how critical IT is in supporting new business models.

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Rearchitecting the Microsoft licensing platform for Azure

Developing a solution Microsoft realized that converting from the old system would be a multi-year project. The new system needed to be flexible enough so that it could scale up to eventually support a massive user base. That is why a cloud-based platform using Azure was the chosen solution. During evaluation and planning, Microsoft had to: 

Evaluate available technology.

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Choose the approach that best integrates with the current application roadmap.

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Determine organizational readiness.

Rearchitecting for Azure When the Microsoft Enterprise Commerce team decided to move volume licensing to the cloud, it chose to use platform as a service (PaaS) for all new development. PaaS provides benefits for developers, who can use out-of-box services for elasticity, redundancy, resiliency, and a better user experience. It also provides access to capacity on demand instead of requiring a separate infrastructure team to manage capacity. PaaS provides manageability behind the scenes; for example, there is no need to worry about patching. The Microsoft Enterprise Commerce team determined what architectural changes were required to support the Azure platform. Those changes included: 

A service layer to manage inter-database communication.

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A stateless versus stateful approach to web development.

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Graceful failover to multiple data centers.

Two approaches were evaluated when deciding how to move volume licensing to the cloud. The first approach involved building an entirely new system in Azure and then migrating users. The second was a phased approach that involved building components of the solution in Azure for a hybrid design. To minimize user impact and to align with business launches, Microsoft chose the phased approach. This approach integrated with the phased approach that was used for the app rollout. For this phased approach, Microsoft considered various approaches to build new service layers in Azure: 

Bottom-up approach: DB layer, service layer, UI layer.

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Top down approach: UI layer, service layer, DB layer.

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Opportunistic approach: Foundational, data, UI.

The opportunistic approach was chosen, which involves first moving the foundational components to Azure and then bringing in new features in later phases.

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Rearchitecting the Microsoft licensing platform for Azure

Building foundational services in Azure To streamline developer productivity, Microsoft used the opportunistic approach and built the foundational services in Azure. Those common services, including authentication and authorization, caching, logging, and messaging, could be used across all the different components of the platform.

Figure 1. Microsoft Enterprise Commerce Platform – Simple System Context As the figure shows, the focus for the new platform was on: 

Using Azure Service Bus and hybrid connections to enable connectivity between the onpremises and cloud-based solutions.

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Putting the core foundational components in the cloud to provide capabilities such as authentication and authorization, caching, logging, and messaging.

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Building a UI component, the field portal, in the cloud to provide users with a cloud-based experience for gathering usage telemetry.

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Testing the architectural plan to move volume licensing to Azure.

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Creating a cloud-based version of the field portal to run in parallel with the on-premises version.

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Gathering telemetry information about the user experience before cutting over completely to the Azure portal.

Lessons learned and challenges Microsoft is making PaaS a priority for application modernization. We have received the greatest long-term benefits by taking advantage of the hosted services in PaaS. Infrastructure as a service

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Rearchitecting the Microsoft licensing platform for Azure

(IaaS) also provides nearly limitless expansion for near-term capacity needs and lets Microsoft vacate private data centers by using a “lift and shift” approach. Moving forward, Microsoft IT recognized that the challenges of moving volume licensing to a cloud-based platform include: 

Connectivity. Large data volumes and hybrid applications stress the connections between private data centers and the cloud. Most low-impact applications can be moved directly to Azure.

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Security. Risk tolerance defines which workflows are acceptable to host outside private data centers.

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Performance. Although Microsoft anticipated a decreased user experience because of latency, it actually measured an improvement in end-user performance because of the Azure services.

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Sequencing. In complex systems that have interdependencies between systems, it is challenging to sequence the migration in a way that enables connectivity between the onpremises system and the cloud system.

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Developer readiness. Developers have to learn the programming model to interact with new cloud services. Developers took advantage of training opportunities that included:  Brown bags, knowledge sharing, and Yammer groups  MSDN and Channel 9

Best practices Successfully moving a large program from on-premises to the cloud requires involvement from everyone across Microsoft. Best practices that Microsoft should adhere to include: For security and risk managers 

Accelerate adoption by providing appropriate security policies and oversight for both private and public clouds.

For application owners 

Use telemetry to assess the performance and reliability of cloud features.

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Take calculated risks when business value is anticipated.

For enterprise architects 

Share information with all groups in the organization about cloud innovation, deployments, shared components, and architectural designs.

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Leverage the work of others. Don’t reinvent the wheel.

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Azure is a dynamic product that changes regularly. Stay on top of it.

Benefits Microsoft has benefitted from its initial hybrid cloud implementations and anticipates more benefits as the migration continues. These benefits include: 

Using capacity only as needed helps manage seasonal traffic fluctuations.

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A better user experience.

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Hardware abstraction and standardization.

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Consolidating infrastructure and getting servers out of locally managed data centers.

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More agile business continuity and disaster recovery.

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Rearchitecting the Microsoft licensing platform for Azure

Reduced management costs for patching and platform upgrades.

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