Growing Demand, Market See Google Cloud Come to Indonesia

Growing demand, market see Google Cloud come to Indonesia. Utilizing cloud technology is the only way to have a fast-growing startup in Indonesia, according to Markku Lepisto, the solution architect of Google Cloud. 

This demand for infrastructure is one of the reasons Google Cloud, among other cloud services, is now coming to Indonesia.

Ten to 15 years ago, an online company typically needed a lot of money upfront to build a data center and other infrastructure. This no longer applies for startups in Indonesia, as cloud technology allows companies to kick off their operations without spending much money and time.

“If they have a great idea, they can start small,” Markku told The Jakarta Postduring a group interview on Wednesday at the Google Cloud NEXT ‘19 conference in San Francisco, California, United States.

Startups are taking Indonesia’s digital economy by storm. According to the 2018 Google and Temasek report, the country has the fastest growing internet economy in Southeast Asia, valued at US$27 billion in 2018, and is poised to grow to a whopping $100 billion by 2025.

“Indonesia has the speed to grow startup companies to the unicorn level,” Markku added.

This growth prompted the decision to build a Google Cloud Region in Indonesia. Aside from startups, single developers and traditional enterprises are also seeing the need to move to digital.

To make such a move possible, Google has identified three areas to invest in. “We have a long term view on this. So we invest in infrastructure, in people and in the ecosystem with our partners and customers,” said Tim Synan, the head of Google Cloud in Southeast Asia.

Despite not yet being launched, Google Cloud has already grabbed customers in Southeast Asia, including four out of eight unicorns in the region as well as a number of startups. Two of them are online travel booking companies in Indonesia, Tiket.com and Traveloka.

Tiket.com has been using Google Cloud for both infrastructure and data since last year. Tiket.com’s vice president of data, Maria Tjahjadi, said they shifted to Google Cloud to meet costumers’ demands during the Online Ticket Week (OTW) sale period. The last OTW in early April ran smoothly compared to the first sale event in October because the scalability of the cloud gave the company more space to handle increased demand.

Aside from scalability, technology and security were other major reasons Tiket.com chose to use Google’s services. Currently, 80 percent of their server is in the cloud. “In July, hopefully we can have our infrastructure 100 percent in Google Cloud,” said Maria.

The OTW sale period is also a data-driven product. Maria said that Google Cloud’s Big Query, Dataflow and G Suite allowed the company to compile data on recommended routes and hotels for the sale season.

High quality data predictions is another benefit enjoyed by unicorn travel company Traveloka. “With Google Cloud, we can present to our customers high quality recommendations,” said Dary Manning, Traveloka’s vice president of data, during the interview.

The Traveloka team highlighted speed as the reason it chose Google Cloud. The ability to use analytics and answer difficult business questions quickly, as well as the capability to react faster to the competitive business environment in Indonesia are also benefits of using the cloud.

Unlike Tiket.com, Traveloka reportedly uses multicloud and Google’s new product Anthos, which was officially released on April 9 at Google Cloud NEXT ’19, and provides a new platform that works the same way for every cloud.

With its hybrid cloud, Anthos is said to be able to help promote the use of cloud among traditional enterprises. “This is a transformation of Indonesia’s traditional enterprises. Because they all have been asking, ‘How can a startup like Traveloka be so agile and fast?’ With Anthos they can continue to use what they are comfortable with within a data center, but also leverage it to the cloud without fundamentally changing their operations,” shared Tim.

Coming to Indonesia in the first half of 2020 (https://www.thejakartapost.com/life/2019/04/10/google-to-launch-cloud-service-in-jakarta-in-2020.html), the Google Cloud Region will become the next cloud service available in the country. Rick Harshman, the managing director of Google Cloud in Asia and Pacific, said that with the growing number of digital natives in the workforce, he believed the Google Cloud Region would be able to help develop a more active digital ecosystem in Indonesia. Growing demand, market see Google Cloud come to Indonesia (dev/kes, Arsi Agnitasari, The Jakarta Post)