Podo scales up and brings costs down with Google Cloud

Spanish utility start-up Podo launched in 2016 with the hope of helping customers to streamline their utility bills and to provide a fully online interface and an easily understood payment plan. To do this, and to compete with the larger utility firms, Podo needed to build a robust infrastructure that it could scale rapidly while keeping costs down. As a result, Podo turned to Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

Alberto Hernandez, Digital Platform Manager at Podo said: “We were very clear right from the start that we wanted to work with the best and, for us, the best was Google Cloud Platform. We didn’t just want the platform, we wanted the full stack of products like APIs and Google Workspace and all of the innovation that comes with that.”

As Spain’s utility industry has strict regulatory requirements, Podo needed to have a compliant system with up-to-date security certifications which Google has been able to provide due to its own significant investment in security certification and compliance.

When it came to cost-cutting, Podo was able to use Google’s flexible pricing and per-minute billing and only pay for exactly what it used. This was extremely useful when preparing for a thousandfold web traffic spike in September 2016.

The website experienced up to 50,000 users after a national television advert went live and, in preparation for this, Podo was able to spend a month testing the platform for potential stresses and chokepoints. Google’s billing structure allowed Podo to scale up and back down again as needed.

“What we've achieved with Google, is going from very small to very big with a fraction of the cost of using physical machines. The short development times, the scalability and the flexibility of the platform is what changed the game for us. Innovation is important for us as well. It’s not only about what Google has now but what it looks like it will have in the future. With Google, you're good now, you'll be better tomorrow.” added Hernandez.