1. Windows Azure
Customer Solution Case Study
3M Launches Web-Based Visual
Attention Service to Heighten
Design Impact
Overview “Windows Azure helps 3M customers take
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Manufacturing—High advantage of complex algorithms that
tech and electronics
encapsulate 30 years of research and get
Customer Profile simple, powerful results from their
With 75,000 employees and
operations in more than 60 browser, almost instantly.”
countries, 3M develops an
extensive range of consumer
and industrial products. Well-
A recognized world leader in technology research
known 3M brands include and development, 3M wanted to make its
Scotch, Post-it, Thinsulate, and
Scotch-Brite.
decades of expertise in the workings of the
human visual system available as a service to
Business Situation
3M wanted to make its Visual
customers. Using the Windows Azure™ platform,
Attention Service (VAS) 3M created a Web-based application that gives
available to customers as a
Web-based application, with
designers the ability to invoke complex algorithms
high performance, scalability, to analyze the effectiveness of a design, based on
and low infrastructure and
management costs.
how the human eye will respond. By hosting its
application in Microsoft® data centers, 3M has
Solution
3M used the Windows Azure™
made an innovative service available to a global
platform to deliver the VAS audience, while minimizing its investment in
solution to customers, taking
advantage of Microsoft® data
hardware infrastructure and ongoing
center infrastructure and administration. The solution, which permitted
service management to keep
performance high and costs
developers to evaluate frequent iterations of the
low. application, helped the company speed time-to-
Benefits
market for its service and achieve higher quality
• Easy, efficient deployment results, faster than in a traditional development
• Lower costs, high scalability
• Excellent customer solution
environment.

3. “We knew there Situation use for these predictive
From well-known brands such as algorithms. “We knew there was
was a need to Post-it products, Thinsulate a need to make the process for
insulation, and Nexcare first aid, designing things that people
make the process to high-strength bonding tapes, interact with visually more
for designing things industrial abrasives, and traffic science-based and iterative to
safety systems, 3M products are bring about more effective
that people interact ubiquitous around the world. results.”
Founded in 1902, 3M is a
with visually more science-based company and has Terry Collier, Marketing Manager
science-based and developed thousands of at 3M, adds, “In our market
innovative products for a broad research, we found that
iterative to bring range of markets. The company designers spend a lot of time
now operates in 60 countries and creating, honing, and optimizing
about more its worldwide sales in 2008 were their images but they can be
effective results.” more than U.S.$25 billion. challenged by the fact that they
don’t ever truly know how
Bill Smyth, Business Manager, 3M supports more than 40 people are seeing a design
3M different technology platforms before it’s completed.” 3M’s
and has invested years of goal was to provide designers
scientific research in developing with predictive measurements
them. In fact, 7,000 of the about how their creations—from a
company’s employees are logo design, to a Web site layout,
dedicated solely to research. One to the placement of an electronic
area of research that is used in screen in a hotel lobby—would be
many 3M products—such as perceived by their audience. Also,
reflective materials used in it was critical that this information
roadway signage, emergency exit be immediately available. “We
markings, and display and needed to be able to provide
graphics technologies—is the designers with access to this
understanding of how the human information directly from their
visual system works. The computer desktop, multiple times
company’s vision scientists, throughout the design process,
working in its corporate research so they could alter their designs
labs, study how the human brain in direct response to the
processes visual information and analyses, rather than engaging in
have developed complex lengthy focus group sessions that
algorithms for predicting what a happen after a design reaches a
person will notice in a visual near-final state of completion,”
scene. says Collier.
Bill Smyth, Business Manager at The company developed a
3M, says, “Our job, on the prototype of a Web-based
business and marketing side, is to application, called the 3M Visual
make the most of these Attention Service (VAS). The
capabilities.” To this end, Smyth service makes it possible for
and his colleagues identified a designers to test the

4. processes. To become a viable
offering, the VAS application had
to be available to customers in
real time, be capable of
processing images and returning
near-immediate results, of scaling
rapidly during peak design times,
such as just prior to holiday
advertising deadlines, and it had
to carry a low up-front investment
risk for 3M. “Especially in the
current economic environment,
we have to be very careful about
how we invest our capital,” says
Smyth. “We didn’t want to
invest in costly data center
infrastructure and capacity that,
much of the time, would sit idle
and unused.”
Jim Graham, Technical Manager
at 3M, adds, “We needed to be
effectiveness of their content able to provide a high-
using visual attention models, performance application to
which are based on algorithms customers everywhere, without
that predict the elements of a deploying data centers around
scene that a viewer is likely to the world.”
see and to remember. The
prototype, a Web-based
application that was hosted on Solution
3M data center servers, enabled 3M believed that the most
users to upload photographs of a effective approach would be to
physical environment or a graphic operate the VAS application from
design to the VAS. The a “cloud computing”
application’s processing engine environment, in which the solution
then evaluated the image for its
“The similarities “visual saliency” and returned a
would be hosted and managed
on the Internet and reside in an
between Windows map of the image that indicated, external partner’s data centers.
using markings such as those The company evaluated hosted
Azure and our seen on a heat map, which areas infrastructure offerings from
of the image were most likely to
current attract a viewer’s attention.
Microsoft and others, but, says
Graham, “3M has for a long time
development (Figure 1.) relied on Microsoft® tools and
technologies to support the
environment gave But 3M wanted the application to development of our technology.”
work efficiently as part of its
us a huge customers’ existing design
For this reason, 3M chose the
Windows Azure™ platform from
advantage and
made the decision

5. “SQL Azure is of Microsoft. Windows Azure is a Graham. 3M relied on the
cloud services operating system Microsoft Visual Studio® 2008
great value to 3M that serves as the development, development system to produce
service hosting, and service the VAS application, including
because it takes management environment for the Microsoft Visual Studio Team
the database Windows Azure platform. System 2008 Team Suite and
Windows Azure provides Microsoft Visual Studio Team
management developers with on-demand System 2008 Team Foundation
compute and storage to host, Server. It also used Microsoft
piece off our scale, and manage Web Expression Blend™ 3 design
plate.” applications on the internet software and Microsoft SQL
through Microsoft data centers. Server® 2008 data management
Jim Graham, Technical software. “We saw that Windows
Manager, 3M
From its experience with the Azure would work well with our
Community Technology Preview Visual Studio development
(CTP) of Windows Azure, a environment. We also saw the
Microsoft program for early opportunity to take advantage of
adopters to experiment with a new technology platform that
prerelease technology, would allow us to deploy in
Graham’s team thought that the different countries, with rapid
Figure 1. 3M VAS image map
solution was a good fit for 3M. scaling capabilities and no up-
indicating areas most likely
“The similarities between front capital investment,” says
to attract viewers’
Windows Azure and our current Graham.
attention
development environment gave
us a huge advantage and made To prepare the VAS application
the decision easy,” says for commercial release, 3M built
a new user interface. The timing
coincided with the CTP of
Windows Azure, so Graham’s
team developed the interface to
Windows Azure specifications.
“We developed the whole user
experience, from the ground up,
on Windows Azure,” says
Graham. His team also used the
Windows Azure development
fabric, which it used to simulate
the Windows Azure environment
on local computers, making it
easy to run and test the VAS
application before deploying it.
VAS incorporates a number of
unmanaged, high-performance
image-processing software
libraries developed by 3M. “The
Windows Azure development

6. fabric helped us perform quick recovery—crucial for protecting
iterations of code, allowing us to customers’ data. “SQL Azure is
overcome many of the hurdles of great value to 3M because it
we might not have seen until we takes the database management
had deployed to a more formal piece off our plate,” says
staging or production Graham.
environment,” explains Graham.
The VAS interface, and the Web 3M uses Windows Azure data
site where users go to access it, storage services to store image
was developed using Microsoft files and analysis generated by
ASP.NET 2.0, part of the the engine, and it uses the Queue
Microsoft .NET Framework. service feature to provide users
Graham’s team used the with high-performance and near-
Microsoft Silverlight™ browser immediate response times even
plug-in to build controls into the when the application is inundated
application that enable users to with high traffic during peak load
edit and modify images they times.
submit to the VAS processing
engine. The Silverlight-enabled “In short,” explains Graham,
controls are embedded into the “With Access Control, we can
ASP.NET application framework, create a pipeline from the
creating a seamless experience ASP.NET-based interface, to the
for users. “Users don’t have to Queue service, to the VAS engine
Figure 2. Diagram of 3M VAS switch between different where the analysis is performed
deployed on Windows interfaces to perform certain using the algorithms our
Azure functions,” explains Graham. scientists have developed.”
(Figure 2.)
The VAS application relies on the
Access Control Service feature of Currently, VAS helps customers
Windows Azure to authenticate evaluate any number of graphical
users to the system, providing or photographic images that they
access to various components of choose to upload to the
the service based on a user’s application. In future versions, 3M
credentials. 3M used Microsoft plans to provide customers with
SQL Azure, a cloud-based the ability to create entire
relational database platform that databases of test images,
is built on SQL Server enabling users to experiment
technologies, to manage the with, for example, the content of
images that users upload. SQL an advertisement in a variety of
Azure also is used to deliver design scenes—or, conversely, a
analytical results from the image number of different types of
processing engine. SQL Azure, as advertising content in one
part of the Windows Azure particular scene. 3M plans to
platform, provides automated release a final version of the VAS
management capabilities, application running on Windows
including built-in data protection, Azure to customers by mid-
self-healing, and disaster November 2009.

7. “We will be able to
In addition, once the VAS
deploy much faster Benefits application development is
Using the Windows Azure complete and the service is made
on the Microsoft platform, 3M developed a highly publicly available on Windows
technology innovative Web-based service Azure, 3M will be able to quickly
that can dramatically alter and release product updates and
platform through improve the process for enhancements. “We will be able
designing images and to deploy much faster on the
Windows Azure environments that rely on how Microsoft technology platform
than with any other the human visual system through Windows Azure than with
responds. By using a cloud any other cloud solution we
cloud solution we service, 3M experienced an evaluated,” says Graham.
efficient deployment and lowered
evaluated.” its infrastructure costs. The highly Lower Costs, High Scalability
Jim Graham, Technical scalable Web-based service will With Windows Azure, 3M
Manager, 3M make it possible for 3M capitalizes on a pay-as-you-use
customers to optimize designs in pricing model to minimize hosting
response to scientific analysis, costs and maximize profits. “With
thereby helping to make the most Windows Azure, we get a highly
of their marketing dollars. scalable environment, pay only
for the resources we need, and
Easy, Efficient Deployment relieve our IT staff of the systems
The close connection between management and administration
Windows Azure and the 3M Visual responsibilities of supporting a
Studio development environment dynamic infrastructure,” says
helped the company achieve a Graham.
rapid deployment of the VAS
application. “We were able to 3M found SQL Azure to be
wrap our core technology into especially beneficial because it
Windows Azure in less than eight can use it to offer the VAS
weeks. It was very fast,” says application to a global audience,
Graham. “The tools and without the expense of
technologies we were already establishing and maintaining
using, for instance forms regional data centers. Graham
authentication, are fully supported explains, “With SQL Azure, we
in Windows Azure. And, the can deploy internationally without
Windows Azure development having to migrate customer data
fabric provided a great simulation from one region to another,
environment in which we could without having to replicate
see our work in progress and databases, and without all of the
incorporate feedback—early and service management we would
often. We rapidly deployed otherwise have to engage in.”
interim releases to stakeholders Graham compares the time and
within the company. The Windows cost savings that result from the
Azure development fabric has use of Windows Azure as a cloud
been a significant time savings.” services platform to other

8. endeavors at 3M. “We have full- having an analytical, science-
“3M VAS and time staff members who are based assessment of their
solely dedicated to managing our designs. It takes it out of the ego
Windows Azure hosted solutions. Were we to space of subjective evaluations
will help our host the VAS application from colleagues or from their own
ourselves, we would have to clients. We believe that with the
customers spend increase our support staff.” Windows Azure–based solution,
we can have a significant impact
their marketing Excellent Customer Solution on the financial aspects of
dollars more Most importantly, 3M used marketing-based design.”
Windows Azure to deliver a new
wisely.” technology that could change the
Bill Smyth, Business Manager, design process paradigm,
3M especially in areas where
success hinges on a viewer’s
response to a scene. “Windows
Azure helps 3M customers take
advantage of complex algorithms
that encapsulate 30 years of
research and get simple,
powerful results from their
browser, almost instantly,” says
Collier.
Graham says, “We wanted to
make it so simple for our users
that they didn’t even have to
step outside of the workflow they
are used to. With the VAS
application running on Windows
Azure, users can open a Web
browser and analyze any number
of files, straight from their
computer.” As VAS becomes an
integral, natural element of the
design process for 3M
customers, the company expects
to “significantly reduce the time
and cost of design iterations—
while improving the overall impact
of the designs,” says Graham.
“3M VAS and Windows Azure will
help our customers spend their
marketing dollars more wisely,”
explains Smyth. “In our research,
we found that customers value

9. For More Information centers. In addition, Windows
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please contact your local • Microsoft SQL Azure. Microsoft
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provides an excellent foundation Server 2008 technologies.
For more information about the for expanding online product and
To learn more about the Windows
3M Visual Attention Service, service offerings. The main
Azure platform, visit:
visit the VAS Web site at: components include: www.windowsazure.com
www.3m.com/vas • Windows Azure. Windows Azure
is the development, service
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Document published November 2009