We interviewed ThinkEE’s co-CEO and engineer, Jean-Charles Fosse, to find out more about their experience of moving from traditional hosting to the cloud, migrating from VMs (virtual machines) to containers, as well as the reasons for such a change and the choice of Hidora as a Jelastic cloud hosting provider with data centres in Switzerland.
ThinkEE is a Swiss company founded in 2017 to help SMEs leverage the power of IoT. ThinkEE provides a highly modular IoT platform that can integrate with a wide variety of data sources, from connected objects and cloud servers to cloud-based databases and file servers.
With ThinkEE’s platform, any company can create an application that uses IoT devices. They work with organisations in a variety of areas from energy monitoring to technology and equipment maintenance to customer analytics and more - without the need for an internal IT team.
ThinkEE’s flagship product is EEat. EEat combines a mobile application and IoT sensors to help food processors and restaurants manage their HACCP plans.
What software and applications do you use? Why did you choose them and how do they meet your needs?
Our platform is based on microservices built in Python and Javascript. They communicate with each other using MQTT and RabbitMQ brokers. NGINX is used as our entry point which automatically manages SSL certificates using the Jelastic add-on. We also use different databases (Redis, PostgreSQL and Timescale) to store data for our applications.
We manage our microservices, databases and brokers with Kubernetes, Docker Swarm and a set of Jelastic certified containers. Moving to containers has been a big step forward in our technology development and deployment process. It saves us a lot of time on each deployment and simplifies the DevOps pipeline. Containers allow us to deploy and scale our platform as needed.
What are your and your customers’ requirements for cloud hosting?
We require our hosting partners to be based in Switzerland, to be easy to work with and to offer the highest level of reliability.
Our goal is to spend more time developing our products and constantly improving our technological expertise than managing our cloud services. That’s why it was really important for us to be able to control every aspect of our cloud service in a simplified way.
What hosting solutions did you use before? What difficulties did you encounter?
Initially we were using our own machines on which we deployed a Docker Swarm. As you might expect, this didn’t offer the reliability we needed, so we started renting virtual machines before moving to Hidora and Jelastic PaaS.
Managing our machines was too time-consuming and required resources and knowledge we didn’t have. Owning our machines rather than using a cloud provider did not distinguish us from our competitors. So we came to the conclusion that the smartest strategic path forward was to use external resources, as this is not a core area of expertise within our team.
Why did you choose Jelastic PaaS? What results can you share?
We chose to use Jelastic PaaS for its ease of use, scalability and performance. It allows us to scale up resources in just a few clicks. Plus, we only pay for what we use, which is a great way to achieve scalability without wasting resources or budget. Jelastic has exceeded our expectations in every way.
Which Jelastic supplier did you choose to work with and why?
We work with Hidora, a Swiss Jelastic PaaS provider. We chose Hidora because of their proximity, the services they offer and their experience. They provide valuable hands-on experience with the Jelastic platform, and make it easy and fast to deploy our application on Jelastic.
Why did you decide to use a local service provider? What is the role of personal and sensitive data regulation in your company?
It is a customer requirement to store data in Switzerland. This is why Hidora is the ideal local partner for a high-performance solution. Swiss know-how is always considered safe, high quality and reliable. For our Swiss customers, it makes sense to store their data in the country where they do business. And the Swiss values of stability and integrity make them feel more comfortable about ensuring data confidentiality and security. This also applies to our international customers.
How has Jelastic’s pay-per-use model benefited you?
Jelastic’s unique pay-per-use system is a great model for us as it allows us to use our budget only for what we use and optimise our investment effortlessly. Our revenue and cloud hosting are now growing together. Since we started using Jelastic, we have realized a myriad of benefits that come from using all of our resources with optimized efficiency, and not paying for what we don’t use. This makes a huge difference to our bottom line at the end of each quarter.
What are the top 3 benefits you have achieved with Jelastic PaaS?
The ease of use of Jelastic saves us countless hours that can now be spent on innovation and customer service. The pay-per-use pricing model has allowed us to make significant budget savings. And the scalability we’ve experienced with Jelastic is the best in the industry. It allows us to respond quickly to customer demands, even if those demands are dynamic. With Jelastic, we are able to operate much faster and more flexibly than ever before.
We would like to thank Jean-Charles Fosse for sharing his experience with us.
If your business operates in the growing IoT landscape and you need easy-to-use, cost-effective cloud services that provide state-of-the-art local data centres, then try Jelastic PaaS at one of the many available service providers we partner with or request a private cloud installation.
