Toyota Motor Corporation, Based in Toyota City, Japan, Sold 9.75 Million Vehicles Worldwide

Solution Case Study

Toyota Redesigns Web Portal Using Scalable Cloud and

Overview “Windows Azure lets us maintain around-the-clock uptime, Company: Toyota which is crucial for a global business…. It gives us a Company Website: www.toyota- global.com flexibility that was unthinkable in the era of on-premises Company Size: 325,905 employees Country or Region: Japan deployments.” Industry: Discrete manufacturing— Hidehiko Sasaki, General Manager, Internet Planning Department, Automotive e-TOYOTA Division, Toyota

Company Profile Global automotive company Toyota was founded in 1937 and has its headquarters Toyota Motor Corporation has 16 websites that deliver more in Toyota City, Japan. It sold 9.75 million than 100 million page views per month. The company’s vehicles in 2012, making Toyota the world’s largest automaker by sales GAZOO.com site offers car owners—as well as Toyota volume. employees and dealers—vehicle information, social networking,

Software and Services news, and entertainment. To enhance site content, increase  Microsoft Server Product Portfolio scalability, and reduce the cost of ownership, Toyota is Microsoft SharePoint 2013 Microsoft SQL Server 2012 rebuilding the site using the Windows Azure cloud development  Windows Azure environment and Microsoft SharePoint 2013.  Microsoft Services

Situation Toyota. “And it was important that the new Toyota Motor Corporation, based in Toyota site have a content management system City, Japan, sold 9.75 million vehicles that can quickly and accurately deliver worldwide in 2012 and had revenue of customized information to meet users’ US$181.3 billion. Toyota is the top-selling specific needs.” automaker in its home country. As part of its efforts to reach younger consumers, car enthusiasts, and even people who don’t Solution own a car, Toyota offers the GAZOO.com Toyota evaluated cloud and content web portal. The portal provides news, solutions from several companies, including blogs, shopping, vehicle information, and Microsoft, Salesforce.com, and Sitecore. In even a three-dimensional virtual city, the end, Toyota chose Windows Azure from GAZOO Metapolis, where users can drive Microsoft as its cloud development virtual cars and chat with fellow passengers. environment, and Microsoft SharePoint The number of registered users on 2013 for content management and blogs. GAZOO.com has more than tripled from “With Windows Azure, we can provision 2008 to 2013 and is now 1.7 million. server resources dynamically to meet fluctuating demand,” says Mr. Sasaki. “And The GAZOO.com site is based on a site SharePoint 2013 contains highly Toyota created in 1994 to help Toyota customizable functionality combined with dealers research used vehicles. In 1998, the very efficient features, which made it the site was renamed GAZOO.com, and the best solution for us.” company added consumer features, along with functionality used by Toyota Development of the new site started in employees for publishing and analyzing January 2013, and Toyota worked with corporate content and sales campaigns. Microsoft Services on the project. “Having GAZOO.com was originally built on an ASP- the support of experienced Microsoft based web architecture, and over the years personnel working with both the Windows there were many expansions and Azure and SharePoint 2013 teams was key modifications that significantly increased to our success, and they helped us keep to the IT management burden and total cost a tight schedule,” says Mr. Sasaki. “We of running the site. worked in the Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 development system, and that sped up In January 2012, Toyota began working on development because it’s a familiar tool a redesigned architecture for GAZOO.com and it offers a straightforward, seamless to help the company reduce site experience from development to maintenance and costs, make information deployment.” on the site more dynamic, and enhance social networking, community building, and Toyota is taking advantage of the mobile access opportunities. “We felt that a customizability of SharePoint 2013 to help cloud-based solution made the most sense, improve customers’ experience with because it would dramatically reduce GAZOO.com. “Toyota has 300,000 pages of hardware and management costs and content, and the SharePoint 2013 search increase scalability,” says Hidehiko Sasaki, capability lets us quickly retrieve the General Manager for the Internet Planning information that customers really want and Department in the e-TOYOTA division at recommend content that they’ll enjoy,” says

24 Mr. Sasaki. “We are also using blogs—and, Lower cost of operation. By running its in future releases, other social features like site in a hosted cloud environment, Yammer—and SharePoint 2013 makes it Toyota significantly reduces the cost of easy to customize all of our content and maintaining and expanding the site. templates to meet the requirements of “With SharePoint 2013 running in different stakeholders.” Windows Azure, we can deliver infrastructure as a service and eliminate The rebuilt GAZOO.com website was the need to buy and maintain on-site launched on May 30, 2013, and Toyota hardware,” says Mr. Sasaki. “And as site plans to keep enhancing the site. “In future membership grows, we can easily add releases, we intend to use the mobile additional computing resources without capabilities of SharePoint to optimize needing to purchase physical servers.” content for smartphones and other mobile devices,” says Mr. Sasaki. “And we are High degree of customizability. The new looking at using Yammer for enhanced GAZOO.com will help Toyota address the social networking in a future release.” needs of the different departments that Benefits provide content for the site. “It can be With its redesigned GAZOO.com web hard to get all parts of a company to portal using SharePoint 2013, Toyota will agree on the details of templates, but deliver customized information to users with SharePoint 2013 we can tailor our and provide enhanced opportunities for content management system according social interaction. By rebuilding to user demand,” says Mr. Sasaki. “And GAZOO.com with Windows Azure, Toyota is we can easily customize site features to also making the site easier to maintain, serve the needs of a diverse, global user expand, and enhance. base and spread the joys of ‘car life’.”

Benefits of the redesigned web portal include:

Scalability and reliability. Toyota is one of the first companies to create an external website with SharePoint 2013 running on Windows Azure Virtual Machines, and the combination will help Toyota respond to the challenges of a high- volume global site. “Toyota websites have more than 100 million monthly page views, and Windows Azure lets us maintain around-the-clock uptime, which is crucial for a global business,” says Mr. Sasaki. “Because we don’t have to worry about things like taking a server offline to install a software update, it gives us a flexibility that was unthinkable in the era of on-premises deployments.”

34 SharePoint SharePoint is the new way to work together. A simplified user experience helps you organize, sync, and share all your content. New social capabilities make it easy to share ideas, keep track of what your colleagues are working on, and discover experts you never knew existed.

For more information go to: www.sharepoint.microsoft.com