Online Wine Retailer Rebuilds Architecture to Support Growth

Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Customer Solution Case Study

Overview “We knew that the ‘next generation’ of Microsoft Country: United States technology and tools would allow developers to Industry: Retail focus on solving business issues instead of the Customer Profile underlying system services.” wine.com™ offers doorstep delivery of a vast selection of wines and foods from Geoffrey Smalling, Vice President IT, wine.com around the world. Based in San Francisco, California, the company wine.com™ enhances the drinking and dining experience of operates 18 warehouses across the United States. customers around the globe by offering door-to-door delivery of wines and gourmet foods. Over the past few years, the company Business Situation wine.com needed to more efficiently has experienced significant growth and needed to expand its IT support its continued growth and infrastructure to support this increase in customers and increased business during holiday months, and to deliver an enhanced transactions. wine.com was determined to increase its customer customer shopping experience. satisfaction by driving throughput and increasing fulfilment

Solution accuracy. The company deployed next-generation Microsoft® The company rebuilt its warehouse technology and launched a two-phase project to rebuild its management system by using the Microsoft® .NET Framework and warehouse management system and enhance its customer- Microsoft Visual Studio® 2005 and plans facing Web site. Now, wine.com enjoys delivering a predictable to rebuild its storefront by using Microsoft ASP.NET. and repeatable customer experience using the agile

methodology and tools of Microsoft Visual Studio® 2005. The Benefits  Enhanced tools provide support for a company is thrilled with its rapid development cycle, application rapid development cycle. deployment, and a solution that is easy to manage.  ClickOnce technology shortens application deployment.  Web services support scalability and modular reuse. Situation system. Storefront supporting systems, The concept of wine delivered directly to such as credit card processing, shipping, your door was brought to fruition by and tax calculation applications, were wine.com™. It is the largest retailer of wine developed by using the Microsoft .NET on the Internet. By offering a range of Framework 1.0 (an integral component for Developer Fast Facts services, from selling individual bottles of the Windows® operating system), the Number of 3 wine to offering gift baskets, wine club Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET 2003 developers subscriptions, and more, wine.com is the development system, and XML-based Web Development time 3 months source of top-rated wine found on the services. The .NET Framework provides a tables and in the cellars of wine enthusiasts programming model and runtime for Web Key technologies Microsoft .NET and newcomers across the United States services, Web application, and smart client Framework 2.0 and Japan. applications. Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Shipping wine is governed by strict three- The wine.com IT team reinvented itself by Microsoft tier distribution laws. These age-old rules re-architecting both its technology platform ASP.NET 2.0 dating from Prohibition make even the and the development and delivery Windows Forms simplest tasks of warehouse management methodology. The system used ASP.NET, Monthly ~25,000 much more difficult and require proprietary a SQL Server database, and a SQL transactions Holiday peak is solutions to keep the customer service Server–based product—Epicor—for its ten times this promise. In addition to the normal fulfillment and warehouse systems. volume. challenges of maintaining correct inventory levels, procurement, costing, supply chain Francis Juliano, Chief Technology Officer management, and an expanding partner for wine.com, explains that because this chain, each state has specific laws that infrastructure also includes third-party regulate the sale and distribution and systems of smaller companies that fulfillment—laws that add enormous wine.com has acquired, it was beginning to complexity. To meet these rules and limit how fast the company could grow. regulations, wine.com operates 18 “wine.com is an amalgamation of several separate warehouses. smaller companies and, as the company has grown, we’ve used best-of-breed This strategically placed network of Microsoft technology to unify this warehouses isn’t the only secret behind the conglomeration of systems. Unfortunately, company’s success. The combination of a through this process, we’ve also inherited user-friendly, Web-based storefront and a several systems that didn’t scale as fast as powerful, on-demand IT infrastructure the business required,” he explains. helps wine.com to drive a positive customer experience. wine.com called on the expertise of Dual Gold Certified Microsoft Partner, Magenic The company’s infrastructure and Technologies. Headquartered in storefront was built primarily using Minneapolis, Minnesota, Magenic operates Microsoft® ASP.NET, a set of technologies five regional offices, all specializing in in the Microsoft .NET Framework, and the Microsoft .NET–based application Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000 database development, including Microsoft Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003, Microsoft The company addressed its major pain BizTalk® Server, Microsoft Content points (warehouse and front-end) in two Management Server, Microsoft Commerce phases. Server architecture and development, and SQL Server analytics and business Phase 1: Automating Warehouse Processes intelligence. The first phase involved a complete transformation of its existing warehouse While maintaining a low total cost of management system so that it smartly ownership was a key factor behind the aggregates multiple orders to improve technology selection, wine.com also packing and shipping efficiency (the batch wanted tools that would support increased process). developer productivity, accommodate rapid business growth, and easily integrate with Because the team wanted to expedite the third-party products. The team of Magenic rollout of the warehouse management and wine.com developers chose next- system, the solution required an generation Microsoft technologies, architecture that would support a rapid including Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 development cycle and could easily Figure 1. GenX Warehouse Architecture with the .NET Framework 2.0, Visual accommodate future improvements and Studio 2005 development system, alterations. To accommodate these needs, Windows Forms, and ASP.NET 2.0. wine.com built its solution on a service- oriented architecture (SOA) so that the Solution company could create distinct services for

each business function, could scale horizontally, and could take advantage of Once a component had been created, it reusability. was integrated into a smart-client application—GenX Warehouse (see Figure Explains Kevin Kriner, Practice Lead for 1). The team selected a Windows Forms Application Development for Magenic, application because each individual step “Building a service-oriented architecture within the process can run for several enables us to change and upgrade minutes or more. By incorporating components independently while not Windows Forms features, the team was breaking the applications that use them able to incorporate elements, such as because we “façade” each third-party progress bars and threading, to deliver product to isolate their implementation from feedback to the user for each step. the applications.” Developers used Windows Forms to create In just three months, three developers the application’s interface, and they built succeeded in creating a new “pick-and- the application to take advantage of a new pack” warehouse system, which is currently feature in the .NET Framework 2.0, “ClickOnce solves the deployed at all warehouses. “ClickOnce” technology. ClickOnce allows IT staff to deploy a desktop application with deployment problem The developer team broke the warehouse a safe, system-controlled installation, and and lets the team write operations into four separate, fundamental then the technology automatically updates functions: the application and third-party components, richer, easier-to-use, as needed, from a central location. and more powerful  Order aggregation by similarity  Billing Stuart Williams, Principal Consultant and applications.”  Shipping labels and pack slip e-Commerce Architect for Magenic Stuart Williams, e-Commerce Architect, generation explains, “The only thing users need to do Magenic  Printing & reprinting of orders to deploy this application is browse to the Web site and click on a link. After that, the After breaking down each warehouse application is downloaded, automatically, to operation into components, the team the computer and any associated updates created Web services and implemented or prerequisites are included. This third-party tools that support each one of eliminates the confusion often associated these functions. with installing new software.”

“A required objective of this project was to “With ClickOnce technology, we did not reuse common business functions; each have to build the response-buffering Web service that we’ve created is architecture or processing queues that we architected so that it uses standardized would otherwise have had to create using a messaging and, so, will be used for Web-centric model. This is a much better multiple sites and applications,” explains user experience. ClickOnce solves the Geoffrey Smalling, Vice President of IT for deployment problem and lets the team wine.com. write richer, easier-to-use, and more Given the success of the first phase of the powerful applications.” plan, wine.com is confident that future phases will go equally smoothly and give Phase 2: Updating the Customer-Facing Web the business similar benefits. With the Site .NET Framework 2.0, Visual Studio 2005, Moving forward, wine.com is excited about and ASP.NET 2.0, the company realizes the second phase of the project. During this three distinct benefits: phase, the team will rewrite the company’s  A rapid development environment customer-facing storefront by using  Simplified deployment process Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0. In particular, with  Strong support for SOA. ASP.NET 2.0, the company will use several enhanced features, such as Web Parts, Enhanced Tools Support Rapid Development master pages and themes, which will give Cycle the company the ability to change the look As wine.com grows and increases its and feel of Web pages with ease. customer base, it becomes increasingly important to accommodate customer needs Benefits and evolving business trends, quickly. To The decision to use cutting-edge, Microsoft succeed, wine.com requires internal tools technology to redesign the architecture and that can enable developers to build system infrastructure and build windows and Web enhancements with ease. As demonstrated application and services was an easy by the accelerated GenX Warehouse choice, according to Smalling. “We knew application development cycle, which that the ‘next generation’ of Microsoft occurred in a three-month time frame, technology and tools would allow the .NET Framework and Visual Studio developers to focus on solving business .NET provides the tools and structure that issues instead of the underlying system wine.com needs to support a high-quality, services. In addition, ASP.NET 2.0 rapid development cycle. demonstrates significant performance gains over our earlier ASP.NET Smalling explains, “Several improved applications because of enhancements features in Visual Studio 2005 (such as made to fragment caching, code refactoring tools and unit testing), were compilation, and its ability to leverage pivotal in helping us streamline the [Microsoft] Internet Information Services development process while creating high- 6.0 better.” quality code.”

Says Juliano, “Our systems used to be able For example, the team built unit tests to handle 400 to 500 orders an hour per around each business objective. warehouse; but now, we can easily handle Developers can alter the code and then run 5-to-10 times this volume, largely because the test suite to verify they did not break of the improvements we’ve made to our application. Other quality tools, such as system with the SOA support in the .NET FxCop and PREfast helped developers Framework 2.0.” detect problems in the code itself. Developers could check security, performance, stability, and standards project and rebuilds its storefront, wine.com compliance before the code went to test or will use ASP.NET 2.0 and by implementing production. In addition, refactoring tools a Web Parts model, wine.com anticipates it reduce the time and pain associated with will be able to implement changes to the making repetitive changes throughout the Web site incrementally, thus avoiding code. monolithic deployments, which have proven to be difficult, error prone, and time ClickOnce Technology Facilitates, Shortens consuming. Application Deployment wine.com operates a distributed network of Explains Williams, “With ASP.NET 2.0 warehouses, each of which maintains its master pages and themes, we’ll be able to “We can easily handle own server system. Because of the 18 change the look of the Web site for remote warehouses, IT staff had a seasons or holidays by changing just a few 5-to-10 times this challenge replacing or upgrading Microsoft files. This gives control of appearance back volume…because of Windows NT® Services running the to the marketing team instead of companies invoice printing systems. developers.” He continues, “Then, by the improvements ClickOnce technology and Windows Forms implementing a Web Parts model, it will be we’ve made to our removes IT operational overhead. Using easy to pop in new functionality without the ClickOnce deployment method, disturbing the site’s ecosystem.” system with the SOA developers can provide updates and patch support in the .NET third-party components to each wine.com IT staff is confident that they will warehouse’s client computers, be able to more rapidly respond to Framework 2.0.” automatically. changing business needs and new feature requests with the company’s new Francis M. Juliano, CIO, wine.com As Francis Juliano explains, “It used to take infrastructure, development methodology, an additional two months, two or three and Visual Studio 2005. times a year, rolling out updates with engineers flying out to each location. ClickOnce deployment eliminates the ongoing need to invest that amount of time and travel and, as a result, we’re saving the yearly equivalent of two full-time employees’ time that was previously used for deployment.”

ASP.NET 2.0 Makes Building and Using Web Sites Easier The customer experience is critical for success at wine.com. As an online retailer, the company needs a robust, Web-based storefront that delivers a consistent experience to each and every customer. As the company moves into phase two of its For More Information Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 For more information about Microsoft Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 is the world’s products and services, call the Microsoft most popular development environment for Sales Information Center at (800) 426- designing, developing, and testing next- 9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft generation Windows-based solutions and Canada Information Centre at (877) 568- Web applications and services. By 2495. Customers who are deaf or hard- improving the development experience for of-hearing can reach Microsoft text Windows, the Web, mobile devices, and telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) Microsoft Office, Visual Studio 2005 helps 892-5234 in the United States or (905) organizations deliver a variety of solutions 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 more productively than ever before. Visual United States and Canada, please Studio Team System expands the product contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. line with new software tools that enable To access information using the World greater communication and collaboration Wide Web, visit: www.microsoft.com throughout the development life cycle. With Visual Studio 2005, businesses can deliver For more information about Magenic modern service-oriented solutions more products and services, call (763) 398- efficiently. 4800 or visit the Web site at: www.magenic.com For more information on Visual Studio 2005, go to: For more information about wine.com msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio products and services, call (800) 592- 5870 or visit the Web site at: Acquire Visual Studio: www.wine.com. Use the discount code of msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/howtobuy MSDN® and receive a 10% discount on your next purchase.

Software and Services Hardware  Windows Server System™  Web Servers − Microsoft Windows Server 2003 − Dual Xeon 3.0 GHz Enterprise Edition − 2 GB RAM − Microsoft SQL Server 2000  Database Servers − Microsoft BizTalk Server − Dual Xeon 3.0 GHz − Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server − 6 GB RAM  Microsoft Visual Studio 2005  Client Computers  Technologies − 1.0 GHz Celeron Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 512 MB RAM © 2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case − − study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN − − THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, BizTalk, MSDN, SharePoint, ClickOnce Partner Visual Studio, the Visual Studio logo, Windows, Windows − NT, Windows Server, and Windows Server System are either Microsoft Windows Forms 2.0 Magenic Technologies registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation − in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Document published July 2005