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Microsoft Azure: Enterprise Application Development
Microsoft Azure: Enterprise Application Development

Microsoft Azure: Enterprise Application Development: Straight talking advice on how to design and build enterprise applications for the cloud

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Microsoft Azure: Enterprise Application Development

Chapter 1. Introduction to Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a term that has risen to the top of application development discussions in a very short period of time. Amazon, Google, and Microsoft (among many others), all offer cloud-computing services and are not shy about touting its benefits. If you believe the marketing hype, cloud computing ranks somewhere between revolutionary and the second coming of your favorite prophet. But what exactly is cloud computing, and how does it play into the daily lives of enterprise developers? Let's now try and find some answers.

What is an enterprise application?


Before we hop into the cloud, let's talk about who this book is for. Who are "enterprise developers"? In the United States, over half of the economy is small businesses, usually privately owned, with a couple dozen of employees and revenues up to the millions of dollars. The applications that run these businesses have lower requirements because of smaller data volumes and a low number of application users. A single server may host several applications. Many of the business needs for these companies can be met with off-the-shelf software requiring little to no modification.

The minority of the United States economy is made up of huge publicly owned corporations–think Microsoft, Apple, McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Best Buy, and so on. These companies have thousands of employees and revenues in the billions of dollars. Because these companies are publicly owned, they are subject to tight regulatory scrutiny. The applications utilized by these companies must faithfully keep track of an immense amount of data to be utilized by hundreds or thousands of users, and must comply with all matters of regulations. The infrastructure for a single application may involve dozens of servers. A team of consultants is often retained to install and maintain the critical systems of a business, and there is often an ecosystem of internal applications built around the enterprise systems that are just as critical. These are the applications we consider to be "enterprise applications", and the people who develop and extend them are "enterprise developers". The high availability of cloud platforms makes them attractive for hosting these critical applications, and there are many options available to the enterprise developer. This books focuses on Microsoft's cloud development platform named Azure. Throughout this book, we'll develop a simple example application as an introduction to the different facets of Microsoft's Windows Azure platform, and we'll also discuss concepts useful to the enterprise developer, including security and costs, during the course of our application's development.

What is cloud computing?


At its most basic, cloud computing is moving applications accessible from our internal network onto an internet (cloud)-accessible space. We're essentially renting virtual machines in someone else's data center, with the capabilities for immediate scale-out, failover, and data synchronization. In the past, having an Internet-accessible application meant we were building a website with a hosted database. Cloud computing changes that paradigm–our application could be a website, or it could be a client installed on a local PC accessing a common data store from anywhere in the world. The data store could be internal to our network or itself hosted in the cloud. The following diagram outlines three ways in which cloud computing can be utilized for an application. In option 1, both data and application have been hosted in the cloud, the second option is to host our application in the cloud and our data locally, and the third option is to host our data in the cloud and our application locally.

The expense (or cost) model is also very different. In our local network, we have to buy the hardware and software licenses, install and configure the servers, and finally we have to maintain them. All this counts in addition to building and maintaining the application! In cloud computing, the host usually handles all the installation, configuration, and maintenance of the servers, allowing us to focus mostly on the application. The direct costs of running our application in the cloud are only for each machine-hour of use and storage utilization.

The individual pieces of cloud computing have all been around for some time. Shared mainframes and supercomputers have for a long time billed the end users based on that user's resource consumption. Space for websites can be rented on a monthly basis. Providers offer specialized application hosting and, relatively recently, leased virtual machines have also become available. If there is anything revolutionary about cloud computing, then it is its ability to combine all the best features of these different components into a single affordable service offering.

Some benefits of cloud computing


Cloud computing sounds great so far, right? So, what are some of the tangible benefits of cloud computing? Does cloud computing merit all the attention? Let's have a look at some of the advantages:

  • Low up-front cost:

    At the top of the benefits list is probably the low up-front cost. With cloud computing, someone else is buying and installing the servers, switches, and firewalls, among other things. In addition to the hardware, software licenses and assurance plans are also expensive on the enterprise level, even with a purchasing agreement. In most cloud services, including Microsoft's Azure platform, we do not need to purchase separate licenses for operating systems or databases. In Azure, the costs include licenses for Windows Azure OS and SQL Azure. As a corollary, someone else is responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of the servers – no more tape backups that must be rotated and sent to off-site storage, no extensive strategies and lost weekends bringing servers up to the current release level, and no more counting the minutes until the early morning delivery of a hot swap fan to replace the one that burned out the previous afternoon.

  • Easier disaster recovery and storage management:

    With synchronized storage across multiple data centers, located in different regions in the same country or even in different countries, disaster recovery planning becomes significantly easier.

    If capacity needs to be increased, it can be done quite easily by logging into a control panel and turning on an additional VM. It would be a rare instance indeed when our provider doesn't sell us additional capacity. When the need for capacity passes, we can simply turn off the VMs we no longer need and pay only for the uptime and storage utilization.

  • Simplified migration:

    Migration from a test to a production environment is greatly simplified. In Windows Azure, we can test an updated version of our application in a local sandbox environment. When we're ready to go live, we deploy our application to a staged environment in the cloud and, with a few mouse clicks in the control panel, we turn off the live virtual machine and activate the staging environment as the live machine – we barely miss a beat! The migration can be performed well in advance of the cut-over, so daytime migrations and midnight cut-overs can become routine. Should something go wrong, the environments can be easily reversed and the issues analyzed the following day.

  • Familiar environment:

    Finally, the environment we're working on is very familiar. In Azure's case, the environment can include the capabilities of IIS and .NET (or Java or PHP and Apache), with Windows and SQL Server or MySQL. One of the great features of Windows is that it can be configured in so many ways, and to an extent, Azure can also be configured in many ways, supporting a rich and familiar application environment.

Some downsides of cloud computing


Cloud computing sounds wonderful so far, but nothing is perfect. There are aspects of cloud computing that will involve compromising, and in some cases, may make cloud computing infeasible for a company; let's have a look at a few of those:

  • Less control on application environment:

    One of the biggest concerns is that we are no longer in control of our application environment. Giving up control over the maintenance of the firewalls, servers, and operating system can be troubling, especially for sensitive institutions such as health or banking. We are now storing data and our application in a publicly accessible space. There is the possibility of a data breach through some means other than our application. To address these two concerns, services and plans calling themselves "private clouds" are beginning to enter the marketplace. These private clouds will partition our space in a secure way from prying eyes but still allow us the level of access, uptime, and backup we desire from the cloud.

    With someone else in control of the patch level of the operating system, testing against new updates becomes an ongoing process. None of us have ever had application issues resulting from a security update, right? The good news is, we can have snapshots of production environments, which can be used to test patches. This makes it significantly easier to have a test system that replicates production.

  • Higher costs:

    For many web-based applications, the costs for a cloud application are probably higher than standard shared hosting. Based on the pricing announced at PDC 2009, a simple website application with a single instance would cost around $100/month to host, compared to around $5-$20/month for standard shared hosting.

  • Difficulty with hosting:

    Finally, in most cases, hosting an application in the cloud is not as simple as just deploying to a remote server. For existing applications, there may be some significant changes, such as replacing local connection strings with a service-oriented architecture, or utilizing high-performance storage such as tables and blobs rather than file system storage. Hopefully, the rest of this book will help diminish any differences between a local and a cloud application.

Cloud computing infrastructure


Cloud computing requires more than just a server room, and the different providers employ different technologies. In all cases, cloud computing relies on data centers in multiple geographic locations, with multiple redundancies of everything. It's quite a challenge to locate an area that is geologically stable and relatively free from severe weather events or other natural disasters, making redundancies of locations, in addition to redundancies of utilities, a necessity.

Cloud data centers have moved away from the "racks-in-a-room" or "raised floor" design of traditional data centers. One of the more common designs for cloud data centers is to modify a shipping container to hold racks of servers, and then linking multiple containers together into a large center. The container-based design is used more for stability, space efficiency, and physical isolation of machines. A forty-foot tall rack of servers would be highly unstable and extremely difficult to manage. But a stack of four containers is very stable, and each container is as easy to manage as a small server room. It's also more efficient to cool a number of small rooms as compared to a giant warehouse.

For Azure, Microsoft has taken the container concept a little farther. Microsoft's Azure containers (called Generation 4 Modular Data Centers or G4MDC) are not based on a shipping container, although the end design resembles one. Technically, Microsoft's containers are classified as air handling units and the servers as heaters. Cooling is achieved by pulling outside air through filters, into the container, and around the servers at high velocity. In fact, some of Microsoft's new data centers won't even have roofs! Each G4MDC unit is completely self-contained with airflow regulation, and its own connections for power and bandwidth. Each 40-foot unit can accommodate up to 2,000 servers, and some of Microsoft's facilities will house 400,000 to 500,000 servers.

Cloudy skies ahead


Usually, cloudy skies are a bad thing–many a day at the beach has been ruined by an abundance of clouds. But in the case of cloud computing, the more clouds, the better! The number of providers of cloud computing services is increasing, but for the enterprise developer, the three major options at the time of writing are from Google, Amazon, and Microsoft.

Google's cloud offering is named the Google AppEngine, and currently supports Python and Java languages. Data are stored in the Google AppEngine data store, a proprietary database utilizing Google Query Language (GQL). For the interested developer, Google offers a free plan with multiple applications.

Amazon has several cloud offerings, all under the Amazon Web Services umbrella, including Simple DB, Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Simple Storage Service (S3), and Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). Simple DB and S3 are data-storage options that are used for everything from compressed backup locations to simple content delivery networks. EC2 is a service that allows us to create a virtual machine to our specifications, and upload it to our cloud-hosting account. We are still completely responsible for the care and feeding of our VM, but Amazon provides the hosting infrastructure. The Amazon VPC is our own private IP block carved out of Amazon's Web Services. The Amazon VPC can be made part of our local network by means of VPN from our firewall to our isolated cloud storage, gaining much of the benefits of cloud storage with the convenience of a local network resource.

Last but not least (and the star of this book) is Microsoft's Azure. Azure actually comprises three services, each of which can be used independently or combined into a completely cloud-based application. When most people speak of Azure, they're speaking of Windows Azure, which is the operating system, application hosting as well as simple storage services. The second piece of Azure is one that has generated a great deal of excitement—SQL Azure. SQL Azure is an almost feature complete version of SQL Server 2008. The final piece of the Windows Azure platform is the

AppFabric, which provides connection and authentication services along with the Service Bus–an enterprise service bus implementation capable of bridging two different enterprises.

Is cloud computing "enterprisey" enough?


There have been many products and services making great promises to the enterprise developer, and a lot of the chatter about cloud computing at times makes it seem like this is yet another buzzword that will pass. Looking at the companies that have made the move to the various cloud platforms makes us think otherwise. Even before its official release, companies such as Domino's, Kelly Blue Book, and Coca-Cola Enterprises had already adapted applications for Azure, and many more case studies were posted from PDC 2009. To underscore the flexibility of the Azure platform, Domino's application is written in Java and served by Tomcat.

No cloud computing platform can be all things to all people. Each platform differs in its capabilities and service offerings, and price can be a factor as well. Enterprise applications typically include a database back end, and Google's lack of a relational database and limited language support (Python and some flavors of Java) make it a tough sell for enterprises that require a full database and use .NET technologies. With Amazon's services, we need to build our own virtual machine (or start with a pre-built one), but we are still responsible for licensing costs, removing the price advantage. Microsoft's Azure platform is designed to be a very happy medium–a wide range of languages can be used, there are no licensing costs, and Azure has some advanced features such as Access Control and Service Bus not found in other cloud offerings. One thing is for sure–with three big players in the cloud computing game, the services will become more feature rich, less expensive, and in the end, the consumers will benefit greatly.

The presence of so many large applications in the cloud is not proof positive enough to conclude that cloud computing is the way of the future, but such rapid adoption speaks well of the advantages of cloud-based applications, especially the time to develop them. The promise of cloud computing platforms is that they are stable, scalable, easy to develop, and are cost effective. Time will tell which providers perform the best, but even at this early stage there are plenty of case studies to observe.

Summary


This chapter served as an overview of cloud computing, from a definition to covering a few advantages and disadvantages. We delved a little into the physical infrastructure of a cloud data center and finished up with a brief overview of the three main enterprise providers (Google, Amazon, and Microsoft). The cloud computing offerings have emerged and grown in a very short period of time, sparking not only a great deal of conversation, but also a fair amount of adoption.

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Key benefits

  • Build scalable enterprise applications using Microsoft Azure
  • The perfect fast-paced case study for developers and architects wanting to enhance core business processes
  • Packed with examples to illustrate concepts
  • Written in the context of building an online portal for the case-study application

Description

Microsoft's Azure platform has proved itself to be a highly scalable and highly available platform for enterprise applications. Despite a familiar development model, there is a difference between developing for Azure and moving applications and data into the cloud. You need to be aware of how to technically implement large-scale elastic applications. In this book, the authors develop an Azure application and discuss architectural considerations and important decision points for hosting an application on Azure. This book is a fast-paced introduction to all the major features of Azure, with considerations for enterprise developers. It starts with an overview of cloud computing in general, followed by an overview of Microsoft's Azure platform, and covers Windows Azure, SQL Azure, and AppFabric, discussing them with the help of a case-study. The book guides you through setting up the tools needed for Azure development, and outlines the sample application that will be built in the later chapters. Each subsequent chapter focuses on one aspect of the Azure platform—web roles, queue storage, SQL Azure, and so on—discussing the feature in greater detail and then providing a programming example by building parts of the sample application. Important architectural and security considerations are discussed with each Azure feature. The authors cover topics that are important to enterprise development, such as transferring data from an on-premises database to SQL Azure using SSIS, securing an application using AppFabric access control, blob and table storage, and asynchronous messaging using Queue Storage. Readers will learn to leverage the use of queues and worker roles for the separation of responsibilities between web and worker roles, enabling linear scale out of an Azure application through the use of additional instances. A truly "elastic" application is one that can be scaled up or down quickly to match resources to demand as well as control costs; with the practices in this book you will achieve application elasticity.

Who is this book for?

If you provide technological leadership to their enterprise—senior developers, architects, CIO/CTO and you want or need to guide your enterprise’s application design to Azure, this is the perfect book for you! Since the examples are in .NET, the book will skew to MS-oriented developers. But a lot of what is discussed will be applicable to anyone wanting to work with Azure. No matter what language you use, you provision the application fabric the same way, and all the underlying concepts will be the same. You will need experience with Visual Studio, and some basic SQL Server knowledge.

What you will learn

  • Explore the major features of Azure
  • Examine the differences between Azure development and traditional application development
  • Integrate with an on-premises database using SSIS
  • Utilize blob, table, and queue storage
  • Develop web and worker roles
  • Log application diagnostics and events
  • Create a WCF service in a web role
  • Review considerations for moving an application and data into the cloud
  • Create a Windows Forms application, and integrate it with web services using Visual Studio
  • Monitor your application s performance using Azure Diagnostics
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Language : English
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Table of Contents

15 Chapters
Introduction to Cloud Computing Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
The Nickel Tour of Azure Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Setting Up for Development Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Designing our Sample Application Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Introduction to SQL Azure Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Azure Blob Storage Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Azure Table Storage Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Queue Storage Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Web Role Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Web Services and Azure Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Worker Roles Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Local Application for Updates Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Azure AppFabric Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Azure Monitoring and Diagnostics Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Deploying to Windows Azure Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

Rating distribution
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon Empty star icon 3.7
(3 Ratings)
5 star 33.3%
4 star 0%
3 star 66.7%
2 star 0%
1 star 0%
nikos anastopoulos Apr 20, 2011
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
I had the privilege to read and make a small review of the "Microsoft Azure: Enterprise Application Development", from Richard J. Dudley, Nathan A. Duchene published by PACKT Publishing (ISBN 978-1-849680-98-1) on December 2010.I spent enough time reading the book, and I strongly believe it's a very nice book, for the following reasons:- It has a very nice structure, that helps readers become familiar with both Cloud and Microsoft's Cloud Platform offering (Windows Azure), even if they had never heard about this term. I really liked the statement "No cloud computing platform can be all things to all people", since there is a lot of noise and different interpretation of Cloud, either by vendors or by nature (public vs. private) [Chapter 1: Introduction to Cloud Computing]- "Explaining Azure to the managers" was a nice surprise, since they demystify all new aspects of Azure [Chapter 2: The Nickel Tour of Azure]- The authors provide detailed information on how to setup the development environment and create Windows Azure account, which is very helpful, especially for beginners [Chapter 3: Setting Up for Development]- They also provide enough resources for third party tools and Microsoft programs, either CTPs or on codeplex.com, that can be useful to all- In SQL Azure, I liked the feature comparison between this version and SQL Server 2008 (on premise). If you consider migrating your database on Azure, then you'll find this information useful, since besides feature comparison they briefly cover other important areas like Security, Manageability, Scalability and High Availability, Data Synchronization and Data Migration. [Chapter 5: Introduction to SQL Azure]Microsoft offers several storage options, BLOBs, Tables and Queues, besides the relational SQL Azure database, and there are useful information in each option. It's interesting to note how to create a new BLOB storage, how to use the REST API for BLOB storage [Chapter 6: Azure Blob Storage].- "Table Storage versus database tables" is another interesting section in Table storage since it highlights some key conceptual differences using simple examples, limitations of this storage type, exception handling and use of REST API [Chapter 7: Azure Table Storage].- Although I'm not sure how familiar you might be with Queues (it's a very interesting pattern for asynchronous communication between applications or systems), but in case you are not, you will find interesting the "Reasons to use a queue" section [Chapter 8: Queue Storage]- Similarities of ASP.NET and Web role in Azure and "Application diagnostics and logging in the cloud" are some interesting parts on [Chapter 9: Web Role], especially the association of log files and storage options. The sample application is fine, but I would prefer if C# had been used instead of VB.NET.- If you are not familiar with WCF and endpoints, you will find helpful the notes in sample code and configuration files, as well as the brief introductions in contracts (Service, Operation and Data) [Chapter 10: Web Services and Azure]Worker role is an interesting offering and there are some useful information in [Chapter 11: Worker Roles] like "Uses of worker roles", "Thread pools", "Management", the use of non-IIS servers ("Externally facing worker roles", although there are not enough details on how to achieve that), and recommendations for best practices.- The most interesting feature of Windows Azure is AppFabric, and the book covers the main uses of it: Access Control and Service Bus. The `claims based authentication' and use of Tokens are explained in a well-understood way and the sample configuration is very useful for your first attempt to use this service. Regarding Service Bus, the focus is on using this service for message relay (`to connect our systems with Service Bus, and use the Service Bus as our public endpoint') and as a connection broker (`The service bus then facilitates the two connections, finding a common protocol on which to communicate, and the two applications then use a direct connection'). [Chapter 13: Azure AppFabric]- Since monitoring and diagnostics are important components of a successful implementation and deployment, the information and resources provided in [Chapter 14: Azure Monitoring and Diagnostics] are very helpful.- Finally, the entire deployment process is nicely described, especially the various environments (Staging, Production), with detailed information (screen-shots) that help a lot [Chapter 15: Deploying to Windows Azure].Overall it is a well-written book, that can cover many features of Windows Azure offering and can be evaluated by both managers and developers/IT pros as a reference book. In order to gain more insight on the development parts, you will have to create a Windows Azure account, deploy the sample application, and extend it based on your own needs/requirements.Taking into consideration all of the above, I highly recommend it as a must-have book for Windows Azure introduction (level 200) book
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Adwait Ullal Feb 20, 2012
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 3
The book is a good (but outdated) introduction to Azure development and does a good job of explaining the various components of Azure and their relationships. However, I was disappointed with the title of the book and it's contents. From the title, I was expecting the book to tack topics such as:- Change Management- Monitoring- Release Management- Integration- Identity Managementand other topics relevant to enterprise development. These topics were either glossed over or not covered in this book.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Ivan Brugiolo Sep 15, 2011
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 3
I concurr with the other reviewer that the book is a well structured walk-through of the product offering and services of Azure (something messing such as Cache, and the VM worker role probably came out after the publishing).I did not like the presentation too UI/GUI/VS oriented presentation of the Web Role part.It would have been more beneficial to clarify what magic happens in the `development` phase, how is that related to the programmability model and the settings model, and how that relates to the deployment.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
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What is your returns and refunds policy? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Return Policy:

We want you to be happy with your purchase from Packtpub.com. We will not hassle you with returning print books to us. If the print book you receive from us is incorrect, damaged, doesn't work or is unacceptably late, please contact Customer Relations Team on customercare@packt.com with the order number and issue details as explained below:

  1. If you ordered (eBook, Video or Print Book) incorrectly or accidentally, please contact Customer Relations Team on customercare@packt.com within one hour of placing the order and we will replace/refund you the item cost.
  2. Sadly, if your eBook or Video file is faulty or a fault occurs during the eBook or Video being made available to you, i.e. during download then you should contact Customer Relations Team within 14 days of purchase on customercare@packt.com who will be able to resolve this issue for you.
  3. You will have a choice of replacement or refund of the problem items.(damaged, defective or incorrect)
  4. Once Customer Care Team confirms that you will be refunded, you should receive the refund within 10 to 12 working days.
  5. If you are only requesting a refund of one book from a multiple order, then we will refund you the appropriate single item.
  6. Where the items were shipped under a free shipping offer, there will be no shipping costs to refund.

On the off chance your printed book arrives damaged, with book material defect, contact our Customer Relation Team on customercare@packt.com within 14 days of receipt of the book with appropriate evidence of damage and we will work with you to secure a replacement copy, if necessary. Please note that each printed book you order from us is individually made by Packt's professional book-printing partner which is on a print-on-demand basis.

What tax is charged? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Currently, no tax is charged on the purchase of any print book (subject to change based on the laws and regulations). A localized VAT fee is charged only to our European and UK customers on eBooks, Video and subscriptions that they buy. GST is charged to Indian customers for eBooks and video purchases.

What payment methods can I use? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

You can pay with the following card types:

  1. Visa Debit
  2. Visa Credit
  3. MasterCard
  4. PayPal
What is the delivery time and cost of print books? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Shipping Details

USA:

'

Economy: Delivery to most addresses in the US within 10-15 business days

Premium: Trackable Delivery to most addresses in the US within 3-8 business days

UK:

Economy: Delivery to most addresses in the U.K. within 7-9 business days.
Shipments are not trackable

Premium: Trackable delivery to most addresses in the U.K. within 3-4 business days!
Add one extra business day for deliveries to Northern Ireland and Scottish Highlands and islands

EU:

Premium: Trackable delivery to most EU destinations within 4-9 business days.

Australia:

Economy: Can deliver to P. O. Boxes and private residences.
Trackable service with delivery to addresses in Australia only.
Delivery time ranges from 7-9 business days for VIC and 8-10 business days for Interstate metro
Delivery time is up to 15 business days for remote areas of WA, NT & QLD.

Premium: Delivery to addresses in Australia only
Trackable delivery to most P. O. Boxes and private residences in Australia within 4-5 days based on the distance to a destination following dispatch.

India:

Premium: Delivery to most Indian addresses within 5-6 business days

Rest of the World:

Premium: Countries in the American continent: Trackable delivery to most countries within 4-7 business days

Asia:

Premium: Delivery to most Asian addresses within 5-9 business days

Disclaimer:
All orders received before 5 PM U.K time would start printing from the next business day. So the estimated delivery times start from the next day as well. Orders received after 5 PM U.K time (in our internal systems) on a business day or anytime on the weekend will begin printing the second to next business day. For example, an order placed at 11 AM today will begin printing tomorrow, whereas an order placed at 9 PM tonight will begin printing the day after tomorrow.


Unfortunately, due to several restrictions, we are unable to ship to the following countries:

  1. Afghanistan
  2. American Samoa
  3. Belarus
  4. Brunei Darussalam
  5. Central African Republic
  6. The Democratic Republic of Congo
  7. Eritrea
  8. Guinea-bissau
  9. Iran
  10. Lebanon
  11. Libiya Arab Jamahriya
  12. Somalia
  13. Sudan
  14. Russian Federation
  15. Syrian Arab Republic
  16. Ukraine
  17. Venezuela