Salacia Solutions Builds Cloud-Native ESG Reporting Solution with inQdo Cloud on AWS

In 2021, Netherlands-based software startup Salacia Solutions built an application designed to help organizations with their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) tracking and reporting. ESG reports reveal the environmental impact of a company by collecting data such as fuel and energy usage, resource inflows, characteristics of employees, and then calculating the real-world effects.

ESG reporting is becoming increasingly important. From 2024, the European Union (EU) is expected to make ESG reporting mandatory for all Europe-based listed companies with all large non-listed companies to follow in 2025. This will require around 50,000 companies to examine their business processes and supply chains to accurately calculate and report their environmental impact, alongside their usual financial reports.

Salacia Solutions built its ESG solution in 2021 on premises but wanted the final product to be based on AWS. To help deliver the project, it chose to work with local integration consultant and AWS Partner inQdo Cloud. “We chose AWS because it was technically the best solution,” says Kees Kerstens, co-founder of Salacia Solutions. “InQdo Cloud helped us choose the most appropriate AWS services and set up the infrastructure to be cost effective while maximizing performance.” The AWS Partner also helped Salacia get ready for ISAE 3402 certification—an international auditing standard.

Salacia Solutions’ two founders built the original functionality of its platform using spreadsheets based on their experience at a consulting firm that specialized in sustainability. However, they wanted to evolve the service and create a cloud-native application that automatically collected relevant data and performed the necessary calculations. “We had ample experience in doing ESG calculations, but we had to transfer our knowledge into a practical software solution,” says Kerstens. “We didn’t want to worry about GDPR compliance, security, or the infrastructure—it all had to just work so we could focus on the platform itself.”

They wanted to use APIs to gather information from customers, so they chose Amazon API Gateway, a fully managed service that makes it easy for developers to create, publish, maintain, monitor, and secure APIs at any scale. They also used AWS App Runner, a fully managed application service that lets users build, deploy, and run web applications and API services without prior infrastructure or container experience. To power all the API requests, they used AWS Lambda, a serverless, event-driven compute service that lets users run code for virtually any type of application or backend service without provisioning or managing servers.

All the data points and calculator results were stored using Amazon DynamoDB, a fully managed, serverless, key-value NoSQL database designed to run high-performance applications at any scale. “We use an inbound API so the client can easily share their data with our platform,” says Kerstens. “Then we enrich the data, run an analysis, and store the results in DynamoDB—it’s all serverless so we only pay for the resources we use.”

To easily manage user accounts and access keys, they chose Amazon Cognito, which delivers secure, frictionless customer identity and access management that scales, and AWS Secrets Manager, which helps manage, retrieve, and rotate database credentials, API keys, and other secrets throughout their lifecycles.

Salacia Solutions’ platform now has the right infrastructure to support its expansion, and Kerstens is expecting a large influx of customers over the next 2 years. “There will be a lot of companies obliged to make ESG calculations and produce this type of annual report,” says Kerstens. “Thanks to AWS and inQdo Cloud, we have a scalable platform that comprehensively covers the upcoming ESG legislation, and the reports we produce are fully traceable, transparent, and easily audited by an accountant.”

Kerstens is extremely happy with how inQdo Cloud has evolved its services to suit Salacia’s requirements. Beginning in 2021, inQdo Cloud helped to set up the infrastructure and train Salacia Solutions’ staff to use cloud technologies. By the start of 2022, it had its first customer signed up and now has more than 25 customers and hundreds of individual users. inQdo Cloud now plays more of a consultancy role, helping Salacia stay on top of new services and provides technical advice when needed. “Our in-house software team now manages our infrastructure but inQdo Cloud are always available when we need advice—they always respond quickly,” says Kerstens. “New AWS services are being introduced all the time and inQdo Cloud help us make sure we are using the best services to suit our requirements.”