In June 2010, Microsoft and Murano Software completed Cloud Provisioning and Billing, a project that turned out to be a great success. Murano’s performance showed that the company is one of the world-class experts in Microsoft's cloud computing technologies.

"Murano Software is great partner to work with! The company has a talented team that always delivers quality code on time. They reach project goals and meet the deadlines, regardless of the challenges they face along the way," commented Aleksey Savateyev, senior architect at Microsoft's Developer and Platform Evangelism (DPE) team.

Cloud computing is gaining more and more popularity. A significant component that plays a big part in the course of this trend is Windows Azure, Microsoft's first cloud computing platform. It includes several services that can be beneficial for businesses of all sizes. Using Azure, developers can build all kinds of cloud applications, cutting costs and gaining a boost in efficiency and flexibility.

To facilitate the access of developers across the globe to Azure resources, Microsoft came up with the Cloud Provisioning and Billing (CPB) project. Originally, it was conceived as a proof of concept in a box, i.e., an application to demonstrate the feasibility of a certain idea— namely, the idea of provisioning dedicated resources in Windows Azure to developers of cloud applications and streamlining their onboarding.

Murano Software, Microsoft’s Silver Certified Partner, has an impressive track record of project collaboration with Microsoft. The company is a leading expert in Windows Azure technologies. That is why it was a perfect match for collaborating on CPB. Developers in Murano possess the top-notch expertise and skills that Microsoft was looking for in a project partner when CPB was conceived.

Murano’s team made highly productive use of agile practices working on CPB. An aspect of collaboration that the team was especially focused on was organizing effective communication. Microsoft highlighted that it was a very important component of the project success. Murano took the best of Scrum method to implement in CPB on the way toward reaching the set goals. The project work was divided in several "sprints." After each of them, the team delivered a demonstrable application and code. To review the results and issues that they encountered during each “sprint,” the team had regular meetings. The efficiency of this collaboration pattern was one of the core factors that ensured the great results of the project.

New opportunities for CPB functionality opened up during the course of the project. So, as the work moved forward, Microsoft realized that it was possible to use CPB in a broader set of scenarios than originally conceived:

• Resell Windows Azure Platform services and resources along with value-added services developed by the service provider;
• Give the provider's customers an opportunity to customize services or applications before they are deployed in Windows Azure.

As a result, Cloud Provisioning and Billing is a powerful Web application that boosts the development of Windows Azure cloud computing. CPB allows a certain partner company (service provider) to resell Microsoft's Windows Azure resources. A major benefit for service providers is that they can add value on top of the existing Windows Azure offerings, letting their customers not only to make direct use of Windows Azure resources, but also adding their own resources to the offering. Service providers maintain control over pricing. The customers are then billed on the basis of their application’s resource usage statistics.

One of the biggest benefits for cloud application tenants is that CPB gives access to Azure resources to developers from any country, even one where Azure isn’t yet officially available from Microsoft. This greatly enhances the spreading of Microsoft’s cloud computing technologies and gives more businesses an opportunity to take full advantage of Azure.

The project utilized tools and technologies ranging from Visual Studio 2010 to community-based tools developed for the Windows Azure Platform. Murano’s team not only successfully operated with the new techniques, but came up with some unique solutions along the way, which let them complete the project quicker than initially planned.

On the architectural side, Cloud Provisioning and Billing is a Web application based on Model View Controller (MVC) concepts with the help of ASP.NET MVC 2. It makes full use of Azure Service Management API (SM API) to control Azure accounts maintained by the Service Provider. CPB is integrated with Paypal, but integration with other billing systems also can be implemented.

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