Aksaramaya Percepat Pengembangan Ekosistem Konten Digital Bersama Biznet Gio

The cloud-to-cloud migration process is often a challenge, as there are so many elements to consider, such as determining the strategy, duration, security, and responsive support. The question is how to overcome these challenges? Aksaramaya also stumbled on the same problem. Since its first appearance in 2013, Aksaramaya has continued to innovate by presenting various digital-based content platforms, MOCO. Unlike other digital book applications, MOCO comes out as the first social reading concept apps in Indonesia. Currently, MOCO has developed into four types of platforms, namely MCCP (MOCO Content Catalog Platform), MBAAS (MOCO Backend as a Service), MDAP (MOCO Data Analytic Platform), and MDLP (MOCO Digital Library Platform).

To build a digital content ecosystem, Sulasmo Sudharno (Founder & CEO of Aksaramaya) said that Aksaramaya needs more than just an agile infrastructure performance but also a partner to support their service development. Aksaramaya's journey in finding the right partner is not easy, and he realizes a solid and reliable infrastructure is the backbone to build a digital-based web platform. Especially for mobile and web-based digital library services or online teaching and learning activity platforms with video conference features (online classes).

"We realize that infrastructure is the operational backbone for Aksaramaya. That's why we need a good, solid infrastructure and provides more than just a tool but also aims to learn," said Sulasmo, who is often called Lasmo.

Continue to expand through collaborations with the government and various industries.

After using several providers from abroad, Aksaramaya decided to retreat and look for local cloud services as they wanted to improve its service performance and began collaborating with DKI Jakarta Provincial Government (Pemprov). The DKI Provincial Government was agreed to partner with Aksaramaya and develop the first digital library in Indonesia, iJakarta. Users can read a book, share, borrow, and return books easily through this application. When it was first launched, the total downloads of the iJakarta application reached 35,000 times with 20,000 users. As many as 80% of them are active users with an average usage time of 2 to 180 minutes.

In addition to the local government, Aksaramaya also collaborates with the National Library of the Republic of Indonesia (Perpusnas) and explores multiple business and education industries. Lasmo said that Aksaramaya would continue to upgrade its features to maximize the user experience.

Finding the right cloud service partner is not easy.

Along with the rapid business growth, Aksaramaya's services workload and traffic also increased. According to Lasmo, Aksaramaya needs more than just an infrastructure provider but partners to support Aksaramaya's needs. Before moving to the cloud, Aksaramaya has shared its journey using various infrastructure, such as co-location services, managed directly by his internal team. However, Aksaramaya encountered many obstacles, especially in terms of maintenance, scalability, and reliability of server performance.

"At the beginning, we had used a co-location server, but the server actually went down when accessed by many people (high traffic). In addition, the maintenance process also requires expertise, and it's a kind of hassle when we have to do everything ourselves. While on the other hand, we have to focus on developing features & applications, shaping the market, and educating the market. Finally, we switched to using the cloud," added Lasmo.

Aksaramaya then decided to use overseas cloud services as they couldn't find any local cloud services with good reliability at the time. Although while using the cloud service, they didn't experience any problems in terms of performance, Aksaramaya had difficulty designing the whole infrastructure topology as the previous cloud provider offered a self-service system. Moreover, they also encountered several obstacles such as latency and colliding with regulations.

"At the time, we couldn't find a reliable local cloud provider, so we ended up hosting it overseas for three years. But then we ran into problems while designing the topology and needed a sparring partner, which we couldn't find. Furthermore, they are in another country while we are in Indonesia. This undoubtedly has an impact on connectivity speed and the most important, as we are partnering with the local government, we should meet the regulations which are using a local cloud provider," said Lasmo.

The cloud to cloud migration process can be done in no time

Finally, Aksaramaya decided to choose Biznet Gio and migrating to GIO Private. With the latest hardware and VMware generation, GIO Private allows Aksaramaya to design the best infrastructure for their services flexibly without worrying about infrastructure maintenance (maintenance-free). To provide a better redundancy, GIO Private also offers a Multi-Availability Zone with several Data Centers in Indonesia and makes GIO Private is very suitable to support a high availability system for 24 hours.

For maximum protection, Biznet Gio is complying with the most comprehensive global security standard, including SOC 2 Type II, PCI-DSS, and ISO 27001, to support various industries ' needs. Lasmo explained that during the migration, Biznet Gio successfully conquered all the cloud-to-cloud migration challenges instantly and helped Aksaramaya's infrastructure run smoothly with no problems.

"We thought the migration process occurs three months at least. But apparently, it took us less than two weeks to successfully migrate to Biznet Gio, and everything was fine. Finally, we found a local cloud provider as good as an international provider. Everything is fast-paced, responsive 24/7. There are also no problems with the security and network issues, and they are very good," Lasmo explained.

Apart from Biznet Gio's performance and ability to meet all of Aksaramaya's needs, trust and shared values are the main reason why Aksaramaya feels confident to migrate and use almost all of the Biznet Gio services on its infrastructure. According to Lasmo, this is interesting because not everyone has the same value in providing the best service to the community. Second, Biznet Gio also provides responsive support and gives the best recommendations according to Aksarmaya's needs.

"Compared to the international providers, everything is self-service and very technical. Meanwhile, I feel more comfortable with Biznet Gio. They provide something more like satisfaction & comfort, both technical support and more personalized support such as recommendations. Until today I have no complaints, and everything went so well."

It doesn't stop there; Aksaramaya and Biznet Gio are also working together to develop the education industry in Indonesia. One of them is releasing the Edoo.id platform, a digital library for schools. Edoo.id provides various features, including learning management systems, tryouts, and social media for schools. This collaboration also begins Aksaramaya's innovation to increase reading interest in Indonesia and create a user-friendly national digital content ecosystem.