fainin

Sharing is caring – also for the environment

The startup fainin offers its users a secure marketplace for renting and leasing movable items that are not used on a daily basis, such as technical equipment and tools. The rental concept creates a win-win situation: on the one hand, participants can turn unused items into money, while on the other, using items that are already in circulation conserves resources and therefore promotes sustainable consumption. The fainin platform is aimed at both private individuals and rental companies. Its design-for-trust concept creates trust for private individuals as renters and efficiency benefits for those providing the equipment. This approach is proving popular. Since the app was launched in March 2022, more than 6,000 users with over 1,400 items had already joined the platform by the end of 2022. The German Federal Environmental Foundation is also convinced of fainin's commitment to a sustainable sharing economy and supports the project as an official partner.

For the fainin family to grow and flourish so quickly, it needs a technical infrastructure that fulfils several requirements. It must guarantee participants a smooth user experience through high availability and flexibility, while also fulfilling fainin's promise of trust through high security and data protection standards. At the same time, it must enable sustainable growth for the young company through scalability and cost control. As a member of the OVHcloud Startup Program, fainin found the right solution for these challenges in OVHcloud's public cloud.

The goal was to achieve high data protection standards in manageable price models

Operating a platform such as fainin involves complex business logic in which chats, real-time data and search indexing, among other things, have to be integrated. Two factors in particular are essential for this: data protection and cost control. "Trust is the most important factor in a sharing community. The trustworthy storage and processing of data is therefore a top priority for us," explains Kevin Mattutat, CTO at fainin. Complete transparency and control over the costs incurred by the cloud infrastructure is in turn necessary for reliable budget planning. It is also important that no high expenditure and cost increases are incurred due to subsequent improvements to the infrastructure.

Initially, fainin purchased cloud services from one of the common hyperscalers. There, essentials such as high availability, load handling and security were covered. However, scaling there entailed excessive costs in the long term, and there was also a lack of transparency due to the lack of clarity of the services offered. And last but not least, there were data protection concerns with the non-European provider. However, secure, GDPR-compliant data storage and processing is part of fainin's core business. So, it was time to look for an alternative.

As is so often the case, personal encounters provided the impetus. At a startup competition, where fainin emerged victorious, the company was approached by a representative of the European cloud provider OVHcloud and made aware of the OVHcloud Startup Program. And so one thing led to another.

The result was the public cloud from OVHcloud

The personal contact with OVHcloud was ultimately the deciding factor for fainin to join the OVHcloud Startup Program and to obtain cloud services from OVHcloud as part of this partnership. Today, fainin uses OVHcloud's public cloud including Object Storage, Compute Instances, Managed Kubernetes and Private Registry. These services are billed according to consumption and therefore adapt to actual demand. The costs always remain manageable.

The foundation of fainin's infrastructure is covered with various services and databases and an S3 object storage service. They are all hosted entirely in the public cloud in OVHcloud's German data centre in Limburg, where they are orchestrated in a Kubernetes cluster. To ensure that the services can communicate securely, all connections are SSL-encrypted and external systems such as those of payment or verification service providers are integrated via API.

By using a load balancer, users always have controlled access to the web application and the server instances. There is also a cloud worker to carry out compute-intensive tasks and, in conjunction with the load balancer, to absorb peaks in the workloads, for example at weekends, when many new items are often uploaded and rented out on the platform at the same time. The communication between the web app and the cloud servers should also be emphasised here as this also takes place on the server side thanks to the SSR (server-side rendering) technology used.

Good value for money made in Europe

OVHcloud's public cloud therefore enables the efficient and GDPR-compliant operation of the fainin marketplace and creates the ideal basis for further scaling the startup's anticipated business model. The almost four-digit cost savings compared to the previous model not only promote cost efficiency, but also enable fainin to invest further resources in developing the community. In addition, setting up new instances is quick and always secure thanks to the mandatory SSL encryption of the connection.

As a member of the OVHcloud Startup Program, fainin also benefits from a direct line to a personal contact at OVHcloud, who is available to answer questions and provide tips and information. The personal exchange pays off: "Technical problems, which only occur very rarely anyway, are always solved quickly and easily," confirms Kevin Mattutat.

However, the data sovereignty made possible by OVHcloud is particularly noteworthy for fainin. "The trustworthy handling of our users' data is firmly anchored in our DNA," confirms Mattutat, a statement that OVHcloud can only emphasise. Data protection, sustainability and the joy of innovation are shared values that form the basis for the trusting collaboration between fainin and OVHcloud.

    "For the hosting of our complex infrastructure, we were looking for a provider that offers manageable scaling costs without having to compromise on data protection. We found the ideal partner in OVHcloud, where we not only have full control over our infrastructure, but can also guarantee the GDPR-compliant storage of our customers' data."

Kevin Mattutat, CTO, fainin