At GC Innovate we orchestrate a unique ecosystem of driven specialists, providing a broad range of knowledge and expertise on all things related to Google. In this series we’d like to introduce you to our experts. Next up is Yannick Van Gansen, managing partner at ScaleCity. He will tell you more about how he leverages Google technology to standardise deployment flows, save costs and increase speed of delivery.
When does your company use Google’s services?
At ScaleCity, we offer a scalable and automated managed hosting service solution, optimised for websites and web applications (Drupal, WordPress, Laravel, microservices, node.js). Our story began almost 7 years ago, when our mother company Calibrate had some negative experiences with external hosting partners. We decided to do it ourselves and immediately saw a great match with the capabilities of GCP. After a while, we decided to standardise our way of working in a deployment platform and make the platform and our services available for the public.
Our main goal is to unburden companies so they don’t have to worry about whether their applications or websites are running optimally. Our speciality is to keep applications and websites updated and available as efficiently as possible, and offer support if anything goes wrong. Kubernetes and the Google Cloud Platform are our preferred tools of choice to make this happen. Containerisation is an important part of how we work since we don’t really do traditional lift-and-shift projects. Part of our mission is therefore to also modernise our clients’ infrastructure. It’s important to note that although we love Google, our platform is flexible and can also be used on AWS or Azure.
Why Google?
Though we are cloud agnostic when it comes to our clients, from a developer perspective I really enjoy just how well everything is put together. The API’s are well documented and everything is just generally easy to find. A second important factor for both us and our clients is Google’s local presence. Many of our clients insist that their data does not leave Belgium, and Google is one of the only providers with local data centres. Finally, Google’s approach towards security is quite simply unparalleled. I really appreciate their transparency when it comes to security and privacy, and this is something that our clients find extremely important as well.
What direction is Google evolving in according to you?
Looking at technologies like Anthos, I believe Google is going to evolve further towards hybrid- and multi-cloud. Of course, as cloud agnostic providers we can only encourage this trend, as it means that we will be able to offer more flexibility to our clients. Anthos will play a crucial role in that evolution, I believe.
I really believe that this openness will play a big role in Google’s success in the years ahead. We tend to avoid certain services if we believe this will lead to vendor lock-in, so if Google ensures their products and services are open and interchangeable this will only encourage us to use them more.
Which keywords would you use to Google your company?
There are probably more SEO-friendly keywords out there, but I would use exactly what we do: no-nonsense hosting. This is exactly what we offer our clients, so that’s what I would love to be known for.
Tickled by this interview and curious to know more? Feel free to hit us up with any questions you may have; we’d love to help you!