Featured Startup on Azure - HoneyBook

When my sister got married, she and her husband had pictures taken of themselves dressed up to the nines in front of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. It was a bit of a hassle to drag all that equipment and the wedding party, and the guests, and the family around. I remember that by the end of it, I just wanted to sit down on the party bus and open a beer.  And then, to top it all off, do you know what happened to all the photos that were taken? They are on some wall in my sister's house, which I visit once or twice a year. And I actually don't ever stand in front of the wall to look at those pictures. What if wedding photos were more meaningful, and more sharable? 

This introduction to a BizSpark company running on Azure is written by Douglas Crets, Community Manager, Microsoft BizSpark.

A startup in Israel has created a solution that it runs on Azure, which greatly enhances this experience and makes the experience of wedding photography more long-lasting and sharable. They are called HoneyBook, and today we interview their CTO to find out what went into making such a grand piece of work. 

You can find more of these interviews with Microsoft BizSpark companies that have solved some of their problems and grown to scale on Azure in our collection of Featured Startups. BizSpark is a program that gives free software to startups so that they can grow quickly. 

 

 

Interview

BizSpark: Tell us who you are and your role in the company.

Dror Shimoni: CTO.

BizSpark: What is your company’s mission?

Dror Shimoni: Make Online wedding albums beautiful.

BizSpark: In 140 characters or less, tell us what your company does.

Dror Shimoni: HoneyBook lets newlyweds remember their wedding through a high end rich media experience of photos, videos and music, fully social integrated. It’s a new way to share your wedding online, in a beautiful framing. HoneyBook inspire couples planning their wedding, by allowing them to browse real weddings and find their favorite vendors.

BizSpark: Tell us about your Azure-based solution.

Dror Shimoni: At the moment we have a solution that curates and displays Wedding media content for photographer and couples all around the world. So we needed a solution that will provide us with the ability to achieve that, Azure gave us all of those by offering a package that has all of that, blob storage, Cdns world wide distributing and it all worked very well with our continuous integration methodology. 

Dror Shimoni, CTO of HoneyBook

BizSpark: How is Azure implemented in your solution?

Dror Shimoni: Since we have a lot of WW content delivery our solution require distributed Blob storage which we use CDNs to deliver ,multiple Dbs that getting synced with Data Sync and Traffic manager that distribute our users to the closest server.

BizSpark: How did you get excited about Azure?

Dror Shimoni: In my experience Microsoft has great solutions and support for Developers, So naturally when Azure was announced, we decided to go and migrate our app to Azure. We didn't look back since then.

BizSpark: What were the Azure features that prompted you to decide to build on Azure?

Dror Shimoni: When we looked at our product future needs we found that Azure satisfied all of those needs in a very simple one place solution.

BizSpark: What advice do you have for companies that are thinking about building in the cloud?

Dror Shimoni: I would say that before starting implement your product, look at the big picture, take a step back and think about your future needs as well as "how fast can I get to market" and then find the best cloud solution that fit your needs. 

BizSpark: What is the one thing that you would like readers to take away about your Azure app?

Dror Shimoni: If you are or know any wedding photographers or newly weds – there’s now a new and exciting way to showcase your special day online. So have a look at HoneyBook.com.