PageUp People app goes up into Azure cloud

PageUp People said hosting its CareerPath application in the cloud is saving the company $130,000 per annum.

The Melbourne-based developer of staff management software has hosted the application with Microsoft Windows Azure. The CareerPath software allows employers manage career development of staff and identify top performers and potential flight risks. PageUp People designed the application’s CareerDNA search engine with open source database tool, RavenDB.

“Without the ability to elastically scale CareerPath to peak periods using Azure, we would have had to spend an additional $30,000 per year on hardware,” said PageUp People CIO, Simon Cariss.

“Since deploying CareerPath on Azure, we haven’t had to invest time in managing the application infrastructure,” he added. “The system almost runs itself, which has freed the infrastructure team to work on strategic projects. That additional, high-value, resource time is worth $100,000 per year to our company.”

A Microsoft technical team helped PageUp People deploy the RavenDB database on Azure and use ASP.Net MVC3 to segregate the data and application layers. That allowed PageUp to use the same Azure database for its Web and mobile apps.

Before choosing Azure, PageUp People looked for “a highly-scalable but cost-efficient server infrastructure,” said Cariss. “Given the size of our company database and the speed of response we required we weren’t in a position to even prototype CareerDNA on existing company servers, let alone deploy a reliable service.”

In addition, PageUp People looked for a cloud platform that would let them sell the software in international markets, had a defined upgrade path and required minimal support.

“We simply didn’t have the resources to create and support new IT infrastructure at our many client locations around the world,” Cariss said. “We needed an easy-to-scale, low-maintenance solution in Australia that we could replicate abroad.”

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