GXS, a provider of business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce solutions, on Tuesday announced that its testing of a cloud computing-based Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) has successfully delivered benefits in application development for the Integration-as-a-Service (IaaS) industry.

To rapidly bring more powerful, low-cost analytics services to its small and midsize customers, GXS has been testing a new service with Microsoft Windows Azure as an on-demand extension to GXS Trading Grid, with information securely federated between cloud platforms. Implemented on Windows Azure, GXS Trading Partner Analytics Beta gives customers greater insight into supply chain performance and the information flows of their B2B communities.

"Microsoft's ability to deliver a scalable, secure and dependable cloud-based service with Windows Azure will play an increasingly critical role to the long-term foundation of the Integration-as-a-Service industry," said Bobby Patrick, senior vice president, marketing, GXS. "Windows Azure provides unlimited computing power via a scalable, standardized platform. Over the last year we have leveraged Windows Azure to test new supply chain analytics services for customers at breakneck speeds. We are excited about the prospects and encouraged by the benefits of Windows Azure to innovate faster for customers."

One of the most pressing problems facing enterprise customers is shrinking IT budgets and continued costly maintenance of hardware infrastructure. By leveraging network-based services in GXS Trading Grid, including extended services on Windows Azure, customers can eliminate the need to purchase expensive equipment and avoid excess operational costs. Using the "pay-as-you-go" model, companies only pay for what they use and, as demand increases, they can scale up as much as needed.

"Our alliance with industry leaders such as GXS clearly shows that Windows Azure offers a development environment that is agile and allows new ideas to be easily tested without a major investment in hardware or development time," said Simon Witts, corporate vice president, Enterprise & Partner Group (EPG), Microsoft.

"As a key technology supporting our 'Software plus Services' strategy, Windows Azure provides an environment that enables new cloud-based reporting and decision making information to be securely and easily shared across a broad set of customers. This approach not only extends the value of legacy systems investments but also flexibly and cost-effectively supports rapidly changing IT and business needs in today's dynamic global markets."

Windows Azure reduces the obstacles to creating reliable and scalable Web applications because it is based on and works with familiar technology. The Windows Azure platform supports Microsoft Web technologies such as ASP.NET, IIS, and Visual Studio 2008, FastCGI, .NET Full Trust, and Geolocation, so GXS developers can use their existing skills to efficiently create, test, deploy, manage and monetize Web services.

Unlike other "cloud" services, the Windows Azure platform is a complete PaaS stack, utilizing Microsoft's knowledge of on-premises development environments as a driver for the cloud computing experience. As a result, Microsoft's enterprise customers can quickly develop on the Windows Azure platform using familiar Microsoft technologies, so the learning curve is extremely minimal. Using the "pay-as-you-go" approach of Windows Azure, GXS customers only pay for what they use, rather than expending budget on hardware and infrastructure to support enough servers to handle peak loads, and remain idle much of the time.