Kelly Street Digital developed an application that tracks consumer interactions in digital marketing campaigns. For seven months, the company delivered the beta application in the cloud through Amazon Web Services and paid consultants to manage the environment and administer the database.

However, when the service went down and no support was available, the company decided that it needed a faster, more reliable, and more cost-effective solution. After a successful pilot program, the company moved its application to the Windows Azure platform.

Because its developers use Microsoft development tools that are integrated with Windows Azure, it was simple to migrate the database-centric application to Microsoft SQL Azure. The company pays only 16 percent of what it paid for Amazon Web Services, and it no longer has to pay consultants. Plus, its application runs much faster on Windows Azure.