Дневник.ру (Dnevnik.ru) (Windows Azure)

In Дневник.ру company 120 people, from them 89 employees in St. Petersburg and 31 — in regions of Russia work. In foreign subsidiaries — in Ukraine, in Poland, Israel, Hungary — 37 people work. In total the project is serviced by 35 servers and two cloud platforms – Windows Azure and Amazon Web Services. Average attendance of the website "Дневник.ру" — 265,000 people a day. The number of the connected schools — 18,535, a total quantity of users exceeds 3.5 million.

Situation

In the conditions of limitation of the budget of the educational institutions and versatile tasks facing teachers within educational process, use of unified information and communication educational environment allows to increase flexibility and efficiency of educational process, to make school more available and to implement operational interaction of school with teachers, pupils, their parents and also educational bodies. The single educational network simplifies problems of informing all participants of educational process on the current questions, helps pupils to prepare for lessons, using the resources placed in educational network and also is useful means of interaction at the organization of different school actions.

Solution

Development of educational network "Дневник.ру" began in 2007, in 2009 the first school was connected to the project. Project implementation of "Дневник.ру" includes three modules. The module of distance learning allows to use different formats of training — from educational games before online testing and holding the Olympic Games for entering higher education institutions. Pupils and teachers get access to resources not only the school, but also to all saved-up region practices. Integration into mobile devices, tablets, phones allows to use the Дневник.ру resources at any time and in any place.

The module of management of school represents an electronic format for all business processes at school. Electronic journals, diaries, homeworks, schedules, the designer of reports, signing up in educational institution, accounting of the movement of pupils and other tools help educational institution to save time and funds for the organizations of process and to focus on training quality improvement.

The module of social network serves for creation of a common information space both in educational institution, and in scales of the region and does educational process by more interactive. Personal profiles, groups, events, networks, e-mail, the uniform calendar, the school website help to communicate effectively and quickly to teachers, pupils and parents. Governing bodies of education receive forward channel of communication with all educational institutions of the region.

"The Дневник.ру online project is, first of all, qualitatively new approach to training, not just a craze, and a resource which it is possible to call with confidence the successful state project with a human face. It answers the main request which is put before a modern education system recently — ensuring openness and transparency of all processes happening in it. The problem of computer competence of parents, pupils and teachers is in passing solved. And it is important too" — Guttman V. A., the Minister of Education and Science of the Astrakhan Region.

Web technologies of Microsoft thanks to convenience of their use, popularity and full support were from the very beginning applied to project development of "Дневник.ру". Web service is written on ASP.NET using such technologies as Cassandra, IIS 7.0 with Web Gardens (Web Farm), Microsoft. net Framework 2.0, Microsoft. net Framework 4.0, Microsoft WCF, Remoting, Microsoft Entity Framework, Microsoft Sync Framework, Microsoft AppFabric, Live@EDU, etc. In the solution close integration and writing of customized applications for tablets, mobile phones and readers is supported.

In 2010 the Дневник.ру company submitted the application for participation in the Microsoft BizSpark program for startups and became the participant of the Microsoft Startup Accelerator program in Russia. Cooperation with Microsoft in the field of education offers new prospects. Now in "Дневник.ру" the sozdanoofitsialny representative office of Microsoft, the company regularly hold joint competitions and training of computer literacy of teachers.

"Дневник.ру" actively participates in affiliate programs of Microsoft in Russia since 2010. And we are glad to observe fast development of this young innovative company, are ready to promote its further success. Such projects as "Дневник.ру" which belong to the sphere, important for the country — education can really change the existing realities in Russia. Moreover, such successful startups will help to recommend the Russian specialists and developers at qualitatively new level in the world. Microsoft traditionally supports the market of startups and will continue to invest in development of the innovation entrepreneurship in Russia" — N. Pryanishnikov, the President of Microsoft Russia.

Initially in "Дневник.ру" other cloud service was used for storage of the user media content. After a release of Windows Azure in Дневник.ру company not only used the cloud storage of Windows Azure, but also made the decision on creation of cloud automatically scalable converter of media content. As decisive factors when choosing Windows Azure the following served:

• extensive global infrastructure of Windows Azure and existence of an exit of CDN in Russia;
• experience of successful cooperation of "Дневник.ру" with Microsoft on integration of Live@EDU services within which all users of "Дневник.ру" got free access to e-mail, the cloud storage and the online editor of files;
• competitive level of prices for a cloud service of Windows Azure.

In the solution a number of Windows Azure services, including Windows Azure Web Role, Windows Azure Worker Role and Windows Azure CDN and also several geographically distributed Windows Azure Blob Storage is used. Service is automatically scaled depending on the current loading. Typical scenarios of application of the solution: publication of the user files and converting of video of files.

"We began to work with Azure since the dawn of this technology, and it is very pleasant to observe how our many wishes are realized" — Mikhail Danilovsky, the director of research and to developments, "Дневник.ру".