Previously, the founders of Sosias have been dependent on self-managed servers provided by a single host. This meant that the effort of maintenance fell to them and their opportunities to grow were limited. “If we want to keep growing, we need a platform that offers future perspectives. A platform that can keep up with our growth,” explains Maximilian Reinhard. Growth – for Sosias, this has three dimensions: First, the database itself should be continuously expanded, for example, with data from European companies. Second, Sosias wants to use the database to offer its customers additional innovative services. Third, they want to acquire new customer groups. The team wants to be technically prepared for these additional requirements and have the ability to react to the expected increasing load – without having to make advance payment for services. Aside from this, the team at Sosias had one additional requirement for the platform: “Since we want to realize new business ideas that incorporate customer data as well, the platform has to offer maximum data confidentiality.”
Our move to the Google Cloud will let us write the next chapter in our success story – data sovereignty included.
During this phase, the Sosias founders heard about the T-Systems Sovereign Cloud powered by Google Cloud. “We’d been using tools from the Google ecosystem for our algorithms for some time. Among other areas, we also build on machine learning models and enhance them continually,” explains Constantin Wild. “The Google tools are straightforward to use, and the APIs even let us integrate our service in customer environments.”
Moving to Google Cloud was the next logical step for Sosias. In the process, they first migrated the production environment from the database in addition to existing applications. The development environment is likewise operated from the Google Cloud. With that, Sosias received all the tools for development and operations from a single source. After migrating operations as-is, Sosias is adding new applications to the platform. It’s just a short step from the public cloud version to the sovereign cloud.
Both sourcing options are based on the same technology, meaning that hybrid setups can also be easily realized. As soon as the new services require a higher level of data confidentiality, the Munich-based firm will move the corresponding sections of their application landscape into the sovereign cloud. The platform is exclusively operated by European staff, with the guarantee that data remains in Germany and that key management takes place outside the platform. This ensures that all regulatory requirements are met.
“With our move to the Google Cloud, we’re on course for the future. We can grow in all three dimensions: with new products – even with sovereignty requirements, with a larger database, and with more customers,” summarize the three founders. At the same time, the Google ecosystem offers the team a trusted and high-performance environment for the development of its services. The low financial risk to the three founders is also no small thing. Operation in the cloud generates only minimal operational costs. Costs grow with the load on the platform, but this also means new customers and increased revenue. A story that contains all the components of digitalization: a clever business idea, scalability with the cloud, future-proof operation thanks to a strong ecosystem – and in addition, the attribute “made in Europe.”
“What other companies can we approach to sell our product?” A question that many companies looking to grow on the market ask themselves. For the most part, these types of tasks are given to interns, who then plow through the internet for company addresses, contact persons, and key financial figures. “We’ve done this ourselves often enough,” explains Maximilian Reinhard, who together with Benedikt Reinhard and Constantin Wild founded Sosias Data in Munich.
“We wanted to automate and simplify these repetitive and formulaic research tasks. Why should people waste their time at work on tasks, which computers could process more simply and quickly? We wanted to develop a kind of Google for company data – a search engine that provides up-to-date company lists and company data to those responsible in sales and marketing, but also in the private equity environment,” explains Benedikt Reinhard, his co-founder. Three years ago, the three students began developing an algorithm, which collated and continuously updated company information from various public sources. The result was a database, containing statements on over 3.5 million German companies.
