Exclusive: Bukalapak co-founders back local cloud management firm

As a software engineer for more than 15 years, Iskandar Soesman always struggled to manage server infrastructure for his products.

He usually sent a request to an IT administrator, but the process took days. Moreover, software engineers can’t do it by themselves as managing infrastructure requires different skills.

The problem continues to exist even as companies and startups migrate their IT environment from the legacy infrastructure to cloud servers.

Awanio co-founders (from left) Akbar Kusuma Negara, Irfan Yuta Pratama, Iskandar Soesman, Agung Surya Bangsa / Photo credit: Awanio

That’s why Soesman began working on a platform-as-a-service project in 2018 that could help developers set up their infrastructure. After several iterations, the small project turned into a complete cloud management platform called Awanio.

Soesman resigned from the job he held in 2021 to focus on building the product, along with Agung Surya Bangsa, Akbar Kusuma Negara, and Irfan Yuta Pratama.

Recently, Awanio has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Init 6, the investment firm of Bukalapak founders Achmad Zaky and Nugroho Herucahyono.

Local pioneer for global solutions

Awanio is a cloud management platform that helps companies in managing their IT infrastructures to become cloud-ready. The company says it is the first local player to offer such a service in Indonesia.

Its main clients are local cloud hosting providers who want to make it easier for their end consumers to manage infrastructure. The startup also helps software agencies that create apps for other companies and need cloud servers to manage those apps.

Awanio’s solutions are similar to those from global players such as VMware, OpenStack, and Warren. “We can be an alternative for those products at a more affordable price,” Soesman told Tech in Asia.

Awanio offerings allow the management of computing power, storage, and databases. It also has additional services such as a billing engine that is integrated with payment gateways and kubernetes-as-a-service.

“Earlier, it took us 24 hours to prepare the physical servers, but with Awanio our customers can have bare-metal service in only a few minutes”, said Alfian Pamungkas Sakawiguna, CEO of local cloud provider IDCloudHost.

Photo credit: sashkin7 / 123RF

Managing the cloud isn’t easy