Using AWS, we have cost transparency and scaling possibilities. We don’t have to worry about basic infrastructure and can expand to other regions.”
Andreas Jaus
Chief Information Officer, enersis
Although countries have reported their climate actions since 1990, the Paris Agreement, a treaty aiming to reduce climate change, mandates a consensus climate goal for all signatories starting in 2024. To facilitate the transition for cities, regions, and utility providers, Swiss climate-technology pioneer enersis built gaia.
gaia provides a digital representation of physical objects—called a digital twin—so customers can understand current greenhouse gas emission sources, summarized through a dashboard. As a result, they can draw insights and track progress toward climate goals.
To offer its software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution, enersis needed an efficient cloud infrastructure to handle data from multiple sources and datasets of up to 3 TB. By building its solutions on Amazon Web Services (AWS), enersis gains scalability, saves time, and enhances security.
Building a Cloud Infrastructure on AWS
Founded in 2011, enersis provides gaia to over 1,800 municipalities in Germany and Switzerland, impacting over 13.1 million inhabitants. enersis combines its own curated data from public governmental sources with customer data to create a digital twin of a city, which can include years of utility measurements.
To manage this confidential data and help comply with the General Data Protection Regulation, enersis needed a secure, scalable infrastructure that was cost effective and offered advanced visualization capabilities. In 2018, it started building gaia on AWS. “We chose AWS because we thought it was the most technologically advanced solution,” says Thomas Koller, founder and CEO at enersis.
With tecRacer, an AWS Partner, enersis completed the cloud hosting for its SaaS solution in March 2023. Multiple times throughout the project, enersis validated its architecture against AWS Well-Architected best practices through an AWS Foundational Technical Review (AWS FTR), which can be used to identify and remediate risks specific to software. This provides customers with greater confidence in the gaia solution.
Increasing Scalability, Security, and Sustainability Using AWS
For resilience and scalability, enersis runs gaia on Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS)— a managed service for starting, running, and scaling Kubernetes in the cloud—and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), secure and resizable compute capacity for virtually any workload. Using Amazon EKS, enersis doesn’t need to manage infrastructure, saving time for its staff to focus on gaia development. For new tenants, gaia’s cloud deployment and application setup takes only 5 days, compared to the 1–2 months required to deploy and set up the application with on-premises hardware.
Using AWS helps enersis feel confident in managing data security and maintaining compliance. For data storage, enersis uses Amazon Aurora, a MySQL- and PostgreSQL-compatible relational database management system designed for high performance and availability on a global scale.
enersis supports sustainability by using the cloud, which is five times more energy efficient than a typical on-premises data center. Also, by paying for only the resources that it uses, enersis can pass cost savings on to customers.
Expanding to New Areas with a Scalable Cloud Solution
With a SaaS solution on AWS, enersis is positioned for global expansion. “Using AWS, we have cost transparency and scaling possibilities. We don’t have to worry about basic infrastructure and can expand to other regions,” says Andreas Jaus, chief information officer at enersis. “AWS has all the services and tools so we can profit from the benefits of a cloud infrastructure.”
AWS Services Used
Amazon EKS
Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) is a managed Kubernetes service to run Kubernetes in the AWS cloud and on-premises data centers.
Amazon EC2
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) offers the broadest and deepest compute platform, with over 750 instances and choice of the latest processor, storage, networking, operating system, and purchase model to help you best match the needs of your workload.
Amazon Aurora
Amazon Aurora provides built-in security, continuous backups, serverless compute, up to 15 read replicas, automated multi-Region replication, and integrations with other AWS services.
AWS FTR
The AWS Foundational Technical Review (FTR) enables you to identify and remediate risks in your software or solutions.
Leading Cloud Innovators in Europe
Learn how leading organizations in Europe across industries trust AWS to drive innovation at every level of their business.
Get Started
Organizations of all sizes across all industries are transforming their businesses and delivering on their missions every day using AWS. Contact our experts and start your own AWS journey today.