Enhanced scalability and resilience thanks to GKE and Google Cloud managed services
Significant reduction in time spent on operational management
Seamless absorption of peaks in traffic
Accelerated deployment of new services and easier access to new international markets
Cost optimization through an astute adjustment of resources versus actual needs
Over 150 million transit pass validations processed per year.
Over 150 million transit pass validations processed per year.
Scaling up to support connected mobility worldwide
Founded in 2012, Matawan is focused on supporting communities and transit operators in the transition to smoother, more connected, and more sustainable mobility. "Expectations surrounding public transportation are changing rapidly," says Jean-Baptiste Rouget, CTO of Matawan. "Passengers want to be able to switch more easily between different transportation modes, pay digitally, and access services in real time, while operators have to manage increasing volumes of data and guarantee ever more available, secure, and interoperable platforms."
To address these challenges, Matawan has developed a complete SaaS solution dedicated to connected mobility, including ticketing, payment, quality of service, passenger information, and use of mobility data. Already deployed across more than 300 transit networks in France and internationally—with stakeholders such as Keolis, Transdev, and RATP Dev—the platform goes beyond purely meeting technical needs. It also advocates a committed vision for public mobility. "Our goal is to work toward mobility in the public interest that is easier, more inclusive, and more sustainable thanks to technology," says Jean-Baptiste Rouget.
Our goal is to work toward mobility in the public interest that is more fluid, more inclusive, and more sustainable thanks to technology.
Jean-Baptiste Rouget
CTO, Matawan
Continuously enriched over the last decade, Matawan's platform had reached certain limits mainly related to the growth of the company. Its architecture was based on a traditional infrastructure, using dedicated servers and virtual machines that required a lot of manual operational tasks and offered little flexibility for scaling up. However, as Jean-Baptiste Rouget points out, "Our platform needs to cope with ever-increasing peaks in traffic, guarantee near-continuous availability, and enable the rapid deployment of new services, while maintaining a high level of security and resilience at the same time."
These issues are all the more critical as the platform is pivotal to the operation of transit networks. Ticket validation, payment, passenger information, and data collection and analysis must all function in real time, without interruption. "In our line of work, a slowdown or unavailability can have an immediate impact on the passenger experience, but also on the very operation of the transit networks," emphasizes Jean-Baptiste Rouget.
Beyond the challenges of scaling up and ensuring continuity of service, Matawan also needed a partner capable of supporting its international expansion. "We reached a point where our infrastructure was becoming too rigid to support our growth path. Each upgrade required more manual operational tasks, which slowed us down and increased our operating costs," states Jean-Baptiste Rouget. "Google Cloud asserted itself as a strategic imperative. Our goal was simple: to stop wasting time managing servers and focus 100% of our energy on innovation, customer satisfaction, and our international expansion."
Leveraging Google Cloud's managed services to gain flexibility and resilience
Initiated in 2021, the evolution of the Matawan environment toward Google Cloud rolled out in several stages in order to limit operational risks and guarantee complete continuity of service for the transit networks already up and running. The company initially outsourced its existing infrastructure within the same scope, in order to quickly benefit from the robustness and flexibility of Google Cloud. But the company was fully aware that its historical architecture, still largely organized around virtual machines and tightly coupled applications, remained a hindrance. "We wanted to move away from the logic of VMs and tightly coupled applications and evolve toward a more modular environment. By opting for Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and Google Cloud managed services, we were able to automatically adjust resources to the workload, accelerate deployments, improve overall resilience, and significantly reduce manual operational tasks," explains Jean-Baptiste Rouget.
Google Cloud asserted itself as a strategic imperative. Our goal was simple: to stop wasting time managing servers and focus 100% of our energy on innovation, customer satisfaction, and our international expansion.
Jean-Baptiste Rouget
CTO, Matawan
With this perspective, Matawan undertook a major overhaul of its architecture, gradually transforming its platform into a collection of independent services deployed in containers orchestrated by GKE. For certain processes subject to significant variations in load, Matawan also relies on serverless services—such as Cloud Run—in order to benefit from near-instantaneous elasticity without having to permanently mobilize resources. This allows the company to manage its deployments and upscaling in a much more granular way, absorb traffic fluctuations more effectively, optimize resource use, and better control its operating costs. By way of example, the transformation now allows the company to process almost five times more transit pass validations at an equivalent infrastructure cost.
"By more astutely adjusting resources to actual needs, we also reduce the environmental footprint associated with our digital infrastructure, especially since Google Cloud has some of the most energy-efficient infrastructures on the market. So in 2024, we reduced our CO₂ emissions by 43% compared to 2023. It's important to us, and fits perfectly into our vision of a responsible company serving more sustainable mobility," adds Jean-Baptiste Rouget.
As part of this overhaul, Matawan also reworked its data management, relying on Cloud SQL for certain critical transactional databases, Cloud Storage for large-scale storage needs, and BigQuery for analytics. "Transit networks produce considerable volumes of data, with significant variations depending on the time of day or particular events," emphasizes Jean-Baptiste Rouget. "BigQuery allows us to leverage this data more effectively to provide operators with a more detailed view of their networks and usage patterns, while freeing us from the operational constraints of a traditional analytics infrastructure."
Accelerating innovation for sustainable mobility
More agile but also more confident in its ability to support its growth and the rapid evolution of uses in the public transportation sector, Matawan now intends to capitalize on this robust and flexible technological foundation to accelerate innovation and develop new services—by way of artificial intelligence in particular—using Gemini.
"This transformation has profoundly changed the daily lives of our technical teams," emphasizes Jean-Baptiste Rouget. "Our DevOps practices are more industrialized and, thanks to the many automated mechanisms, we've achieved significant time savings in terms of operational management. This allows us to devote our energy to developing new features and continuously improving our services. In a market where usage patterns are changing extremely rapidly, this ability to experiment and deploy solutions more quickly constitutes a major competitive advantage."
More broadly speaking, the company now considers Google Cloud as a true technology partner on its growth path. "Mobility is becoming increasingly digital and data driven, all in real time. With Google Cloud, we're confident that we have a partner capable of assisting us in the long term, accelerating our innovation, and supporting our international expansion, while helping us build the future of public transportation services," concludes Jean-Baptiste Rouget.
Mobility is becoming increasingly digital and data driven, all in real time. With Google Cloud, we're confident that we have a partner capable of assisting us in the long term, accelerating our innovation, and supporting our international expansion, while helping us build the future of public transportation services.
Jean-Baptiste Rouget
CTO, Matawan
Founded in 2012, Matawan has developed a complete digital ecosystem dedicated to mobility and public transportation. Its solutions include Account-Based ticketing, payment processing, quality of service through passenger information, and AI-powered mobility data management. With a presence in France, Europe, and North America, the company supports public and private mobility stakeholders in modernizing their services to make travel smoother, more accessible, and sustainable.
Industry: Mobility and public transportation
Location: France
Products: Compute Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), Cloud Storage, BigQuery, Cloud Run, Cloud SQL, Gemini
