The Customer
Speakap is an enterprise social network offered as a SaaS solution. The Speakap software allows enterprises to create their own branded app for all internal communications. Speakap is currently used by more than 350 companies in 27 countries around the world. Market leaders such as McDonald's, IKEA, Hudson's Bay, Kimpton, Media Markt, and Rituals all engage smarter through Speakap.
Speakap was founded by two shift managers working in the retail sector, who noticed the inefficient communications that took place and the number of disconnected employees. With the rise of the smartphone and mobile internet, they knew things had to change and believed in a new, better form of workplace communication.
The Challenge
In 2011, after a few years of experimenting with different prototypes and refining their product, Speakap began onboarding more and more customers around Europe and rapidly growing its user base. As Speakap started scaling, they connected with Leaseweb to build a scalable cloud solution.
As Speakap is a communications tool designed for enterprises, having reliable and secure infrastructure is essential to keep their systems running and their customer data safe. Speakap selected Leaseweb as they were seeking reliability and they knew Leaseweb had facilitated the growth of various other SaaS companies.
The Solution
The Leaseweb solution was to create a Hybrid Cloud consisting of Private Cloud and Dedicated Servers.
The Private Cloud for Speakap was built using Apache Cloudstack, as this would allow the customer to deploy and scale virtual machines easily. It was chosen as it’s highly customizable, which was important for Speakap’s engineering team. Leaseweb mapped out a migration path for Speakap and helped them migrate their chosen applications and data to the cloud in a way which had minimal impact on Speakap’s end users.
Leaseweb incorporated Dedicated Servers in the hybrid design for extra storage and backup purposes. Speakap’s connectivity is powered by the Leaseweb Network, which ensures low latency and high uptime around the world.
Key requirements
- Scalability – to facilitate rapid growth
- Customizable infrastructure – adding resources on demand
- Redundancy – including backup systems
- Security – protecting enterprise data
Our solution
- Hybrid Cloud – scalability on capacity and bandwidth
- Customizable Private Cloud (built using CloudStack)
- Dedicated Storage Servers
- Top-tier, ISO certified data centers
The Support
Speakap’s technical department is led by Bart van Wissen, a very knowledgeable CTO and strategist. He commented that the best thing about Leaseweb is that everything “just works” and they rarely have to deal with Leaseweb Support. Their developers are empowered to build new solutions without feeling any limitations.
"Our developers have access to all the resources they need via the Leaseweb control panel, and most importantly everything is up and always available."
Bart van Wissen, CTO, Speakap
Speakap has been a Leaseweb customer since 2011, and both companies have supported each other in their successes. Here’s a video showing Speakap’s founder Patrick van der Mijl at the Leaseweb Texel Airshow.
The Outcome
Speakap has been scaling the use of Leaseweb Private Cloud at a growth rate of ~20% per year since 2011. Between 2015-2018, when Speakap went into a hypergrowth phase, their use of Leaseweb Private Cloud grew by 200%. The Private Cloud solution gives Speakap scalability as they grow, but also control, cost-efficiency, privacy, and security.
Over 350 organizations across Europe currently use Speakap, and there are thousands of employees who depend on Speakap to get work updates and to stay connected with their team.
Leaseweb has facilitated the growth of Speakap across Europe and look forward to supporting Speakap as they embark on their next growth stage in North America.
"This year we are going to sign our first big customers in the US, which is exciting, but it’ll bring new challenges for us, and the infrastructure needs to be able to support our predicted user growth. We are looking to use new technology such as Leaseweb’s Container Service to streamline our deployment pipeline."
Bart van Wissen, CTO, Speakap
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