Customer Success Story: Inheaden
Inheaden GmbH is an IT startup based in Darmstadt, Germany. With a multicultural team, and clients ranging from multinational corporations to fellow startups, the company delivers high-performance software solutions and technology consulting that is tailored to the individual needs of their clients.
Alongside offering a myriad of services, Inheaden supports other startups through their Tech Angel program. By offering resources like UI/UX design, branding, software development for apps, and platform backend, this initiative helps bring ideas to life.
Proximity – the cornerstone of theInheaden-Scaleway partnership
In 2020, Inheaden needed a new cloud provider that would meet two major criteria – data sovereignty and a no-vendor-lock-in policy.
After benchmarking different cloud providers by comparing various criteria such as managed Kubernetes services with fast cluster updates, absence of hidden costs, and efficient support, the quality and efficiency of the Scaleway Startup Programs were the deciding factor. Our developer-friendly startup ecosystem, backed by solid infrastructures was also a bonus.
And so, Inheaden, as a startup, found a partner in Scaleway.
Inheaden: different needs for different roles
Inheaden, the startup
To find the answer to their challenges as a startup, Inheaden wanted to build their infrastructure through a cloud provider that ensured the following:
- Connections with some tools as Terraforms, APIs
- Managed services
- Complete Instance ecosystem
As they have clients in several countries like Poland, Netherlands, France, or Germany, Inheaden specifically needed to distribute their Instance hosting across different geographical locations. They decided to use Kubernetes Kosmos to benefit from a managed Kubernetes service while keeping control of their hosting location. Kosmos and multi-cloud Load Balancers helped them maintain control over their architecture and only use the instances they needed, when they needed to.
Inheaden, the startup incubator
As a startup incubator, however, Inheaden had other specific needs. The startups on their Tech Angel program were looking for a complete cloud ecosystem, quick technical support, full documentation, and access to a strong community (via Slack).
By using Kosmos, Inheaden could build a decentralized infrastructure distributed among several cloud platforms and their on-premise servers. By embracing a multi-cloud strategy, it was easier for the startups on the program to enjoy each service offered by Inheaden.
Moreover, Scaleway’s sustainable offering represents a strong argument for Inheaden, angel startups, and their customers’ end users.
By meeting the specific needs of various startups, Scaleway builds a strong relationship with them. This incentivized Inheaden to recommend the European cloud provider to their Tech Angel startups, and most of them are following their advice. Two such startups are IoT Venture and Heavy Data.
IoT Venture, from vertical scalability to the cloud
IoT Venture GmbH focuses on Low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) technology for its products and services. Their services concern a large range of applications across a wide variety of sectors; for instance, in 2019 “It’s my bike” or in 2021, a tracking module for dogs.
In the beginning, they managed between 20,000 and 40,000 devices, manually. The infrastructure was running on two servers. They then tried to scale vertically but realized that this strategy had its limits. In the end, the COO and CTO decided to start a complete migration to the cloud.
With a non-characterized application however, migrating was quite the challenge. After rebuilding the whole application, this time in microservices, they created a whole new CI/CD pipeline.
Then, once they began using Kubernetes Kapsule and Managed Database, they created a reliable and highly replicated structure.
And finally, from 40,000 devices, IoT Venture can now manage upwards of 140,000 devices, with 5,000 messages distributed around Europe per minute.
Heavy Data – scalability as the key to success
Heavy Data offers quick to implement and proven Industry 4.0 processes to bring every analog scale to the cloud.
Through an IoT approach, they developed a scalable infrastructure that is based on Scaleway Kubernetes Kapsule. This means that when the number of devices increases, the startup just has to wrap up new pods. The database can be upgraded without any downtime.
Inheaden’s goals for 2022
In 2022, Inheaden will continue to design and scale its own infrastructure.
Their second goal will be to onboard several new Tech Angel startups into their program and support them in building their own products and personalized infrastructure.