Cloud computing is the foundation of many digital products nowadays. From all three products of cloud computing, platform as a service (PaaS) might be the one less attractive or targeted by startup players.

It is what Iskandar Soesman, Awanio‘s Co-founder & CEO has in mind. Awanio is one of the very few PaaS startups in the country. He believes that currently global players such as Heroku, Nanobox, Engine Yard, or Nodechef still dominate the PaaS market.

“Also, due to a small number of locals who penetrated this segment, we see this as a huge opportunity for Awanio,” Soesman told DailySocial.

The increasing demand for cloud computing service in Indonesia is not followed by enough talents of software engineer and system engineer, he said. This factor is considered an added value for PaaS players such as Awanio to gain benefits.

Focus on the developer

Soesman and his colleagues have mission for Awanio to lessen the burden of developers. It is based on the developer’s loads to catch and master all variants of operational-based infrastructure technology meanwhile being agile to manage the application.

Therefore, developers must face some challenges from setup server, setup database server, and scale up the application. “The operational working, not many developers have the skill to do it. It can waste their time trying to make up for the preparation.”

In this product, Awanio intends to take over the operational job. Simply put, Awanio service allows developers to simply enter their code into the code repository such as Github, Gitlab, or Awanio.

Business Model

Similar to other cloud-based businesses, Awanio applies a pay as you go business model and a subscription system. The first method allows customers to use Awanio resources that are calculated based on CPU, RAM, storage, and network.

In addition to the infrastructure, the Awanio system will also run on top cloud service providers such as Google Cloud or Amazon Web Services (AWS). According to Iskandar, developers still often have difficulty mastering the technical aspects of cloud infrastructure. He expects Awanio could be the bridge.

Awanio’s products target several layers of consumers, such as developers who work individually, startups with no engineer teams to manage application infrastructure, and corporations with infrastructure but require a system to manage it. Soesman said that Awanio is currently operating with its own funds [bootsrap] and offering limited service due to the minimum viable product (MVP) phase. However,  Awanio has served 174 users across Indonesia and Europe.

“Currently, we cover two regions, Indonesia with a data center in Jakarta and the European Union, which data center is in Hamburg,” Soesman said.

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Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian