Migrating a Sharepoint Based Web Application to Azure for Enhanced Functionality

Customer Profile:
A large organization specializing in digital publishing, using an application for creating and sharing flipping books for their clients and internal teams.

Business Challenge:
The customer faced significant limitations with their existing SharePoint-hosted application:

  1. Customization Constraints: The flipping book application offered limited flexibility for custom features, making it difficult to meet client-specific requirements.
  2. Upload Feature Issues: The process for uploading and managing content was cumbersome and prone to errors.
  3. Scalability Concerns: The SharePoint environment struggled to handle increasing demand, particularly for larger files and simultaneous user access.

Solution:

The solution involved migrating the application to Azure Web App while enhancing upload and flipping book generation capabilities using Azure Functions and Blob Storage.

  1. Azure Web App
  • Hosted the flipping book web application, providing a scalable and customizable environment for seamless user interactions.
  • Enabled efficient deployment and updates without downtime.
  1. Azure Functions
  • Upload Handling:
    • Built an Azure Function to handle file uploads from users.
    • Stored uploaded files directly in Azure Blob Storage in a zipped format, ensuring scalability and cost-efficiency.
  • File Processing:
    • Created another Azure Function triggered by the upload event to:
      1. Automatically unzip the files.
      2. Convert the content into flipping book format.
      3. Store the final output in Blob Storage for easy access by the web application.
      4. Azure Blob Storage
    • Acted as the central repository for storing uploaded files, processed content, and flipping book assets.
    • Provided cost-effective, scalable, and durable storage with high availability.

Implementation Highlights:

  • Customizable Solution: The Azure Web App environment allowed developers to implement client-specific features that were previously impossible on SharePoint.
  • Streamlined Upload Workflow: The new upload process handled larger files effortlessly and ensured that uploaded content was processed and available for flipping book creation within seconds.
  • Event-Driven Architecture: Azure Functions ensured the upload and processing tasks were triggered automatically, reducing manual intervention and delays.

Outcome:

Business Benefits

  1. Improved Customization:
    • Tailored the flipping book functionality to meet diverse client requirements, enhancing user satisfaction.
  2. Enhanced User Experience:
    • The seamless upload and processing workflow significantly reduced errors and processing time by 70%.
  3. Scalable and Reliable Infrastructure:
    • The new solution handled 5x more concurrent uploads and larger file sizes without performance degradation.

Technical Gains

  • Reduced Maintenance Effort: Moving away from SharePoint reduced dependency on legacy tools and provided a modern development environment.
  • Cost Efficiency: Azure’s pay-as-you-go model and Blob Storage reduced storage and hosting costs by 30%.
  • Future-Ready Architecture: The modular, serverless design ensured easy scalability and integration with new features.

Customer Feedback:

“Migrating to Azure transformed our application. The new upload process and customization capabilities exceeded our expectations, enabling us to deliver a better experience for our clients.”

Success Story: Migrating a SharePoint-Based Web Application to Azure for Enhanced Functionality

Customer Profile:
A large organization specializing in digital publishing, using an application for creating and sharing flipping books for their clients and internal teams.

Business Challenge:
The customer faced significant limitations with their existing SharePoint-hosted application:

  1. Customization Constraints: The flipping book application offered limited flexibility for custom features, making it difficult to meet client-specific requirements.
  2. Upload Feature Issues: The process for uploading and managing content was cumbersome and prone to errors.
  3. Scalability Concerns: The SharePoint environment struggled to handle increasing demand, particularly for larger files and simultaneous user access.

Solution:

The solution involved migrating the application to Azure Web App while enhancing upload and flipping book generation capabilities using Azure Functions and Blob Storage.

  1. Azure Web App
  • Hosted the flipping book web application, providing a scalable and customizable environment for seamless user interactions.
  • Enabled efficient deployment and updates without downtime.
  1. Azure Functions
  • Upload Handling:
    • Built an Azure Function to handle file uploads from users.
    • Stored uploaded files directly in Azure Blob Storage in a zipped format, ensuring scalability and cost-efficiency.
  • File Processing:
    • Created another Azure Function triggered by the upload event to:
      1. Automatically unzip the files.
      2. Convert the content into flipping book format.
      3. Store the final output in Blob Storage for easy access by the web application.
      4. Azure Blob Storage
    • Acted as the central repository for storing uploaded files, processed content, and flipping book assets.
    • Provided cost-effective, scalable, and durable storage with high availability.

Implementation Highlights:

  • Customizable Solution: The Azure Web App environment allowed developers to implement client-specific features that were previously impossible on SharePoint.
  • Streamlined Upload Workflow: The new upload process handled larger files effortlessly and ensured that uploaded content was processed and available for flipping book creation within seconds.
  • Event-Driven Architecture: Azure Functions ensured the upload and processing tasks were triggered automatically, reducing manual intervention and delays.

Outcome:

Business Benefits

  1. Improved Customization:
    • Tailored the flipping book functionality to meet diverse client requirements, enhancing user satisfaction.
  2. Enhanced User Experience:
    • The seamless upload and processing workflow significantly reduced errors and processing time by 70%.
  3. Scalable and Reliable Infrastructure:
    • The new solution handled 5x more concurrent uploads and larger file sizes without performance degradation.

Technical Gains

  • Reduced Maintenance Effort: Moving away from SharePoint reduced dependency on legacy tools and provided a modern development environment.
  • Cost Efficiency: Azure’s pay-as-you-go model and Blob Storage reduced storage and hosting costs by 30%.
  • Future-Ready Architecture: The modular, serverless design ensured easy scalability and integration with new features.

Customer Feedback:

“Migrating to Azure transformed our application. The new upload process and customization capabilities exceeded our expectations, enabling us to deliver a better experience for our clients.”