MMB Software: Driving smart solutions for car mechanics across Italy fueled by Google Cloud
About MMB Software
Headquartered in Faenza, MMB Software specializes in the design and production of car maintenance and management software solutions for Italy’s vehicle servicing and repair industry.
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About Injenia
Google Cloud Premier Partner Injenia drives business and digital transformation in top Italian companies through innovative projects and cloud transformation, app modernization, data management, and machine learning.
MMB Software’s lean development team steers Italy’s motor mechanic trade into the digital age with Google Cloud.
Google Cloud results
- 2 full-time developer jobs saved
- Moving 37% of MMB’s customers into the cloud in a few years
- Creating a simple intuitive interface for digital novices
- Being the solution that meets the expectations of Italy’s vehicle servicing and repair networks
Creating a simple dashboard that masks a complex back end
You just need to look at a car dashboard or engine to see that vehicles are becoming less reliant on mechanics and more dependent on electronics. To keep pace, the vehicle servicing and repair sector is becoming increasingly digitized too. And, MMB Software is focused on transforming Italy’s vehicle service and repair industry for the digital age.
“We design software solutions for the automotive sector. This includes license plate recognition and vehicle testing software and document management software for booking cars in for service, sending out service reminders, and electronic invoicing,” explains Omar Montanari, owner and director of MMB Software.
To ensure that MMB Software’s solutions can be easily navigated, even by digital novices, it invests heavily in what it terms human-centric technology. “We are continually developing our software, and we focus on ensuring that all the complicated technology is under the ‘hood,’ while we make sure that what the users see and use is as simple to understand as possible,” says Montanari.
“Google Cloud was not only easy for us to use, it also offered products that we would otherwise have had to develop in-house. We weren’t just buying into a platform, we were buying into an infrastructure that no other cloud provider offered at the time or still.”
—Omar Montanari, Owner and Director, MMB SoftwareChoosing a technology company with a shared vision
MMB Software started out primarily developing desktop applications for on-premises architecture. But the decision was made to move to the cloud in 2010, when the company realized that providing its software as a service from the cloud would mean it could offer more flexible, agile solutions that would be easier to update.
MMB Software chose Google Cloud because it shared its vision of creating advanced technology that is easy for the end user to use. “Google Cloud was not only easy for us to use, it also offered products that we would otherwise have had to develop in-house. We weren’t just buying into a platform, we were buying into an infrastructure that no other cloud provider offered at the time or still,” reveals Montanari.
And, to ensure that MMB Software was making the most of all that the Google Cloud platform has to offer, it bought in Google Cloud Premier Partner Injenia. “Injenia helps us develop our human-centric approach with Google Cloud tools,” says Stefano Ciccarelli, R&D Manager at MMB Software. “It has helped us build a sophisticated back end while ensuring that what the end user sees is simple.”
Luca Carraro, head of the customer success team at Injenia, adds: “We play the role of the extended team, in both business consulting and technology skills. We help MMB Software to understand the Google Cloud road map and how its products are developing, so that it can create future-proof products.”
“When we started on App Engine in 2011, it was unique to Google Cloud. It gave us a serverless platform from which to build our web applications. And, 10 years on, Google is still delivering advances to App Engine and other tools to help us stay ahead of the competition.”
—Stefano Ciccarelli, R&D Manager, MMB SoftwarePowering up with App Engine
Ever since launching on Google Cloud, App Engine has been the vehicle for MMB Software’s monolithic architecture. “When we started on App Engine in 2011, it was unique to Google Cloud. It gave us a serverless platform from which to build our web applications. And, 10 years on, Google is still delivering advances to App Engine and other tools to help us stay ahead of the competition,” explains Ciccarelli. “It is our front end where we process all our large graphics.”
Meanwhile, to interact with third-party apps and to channel newly arrived data to its app, MMB Software has developed microservices in Cloud Run and Google Kubernetes Engine. “Google Cloud Run allows different teams to work on different pipelines simultaneously and Google Kubernetes Engine allows us to manage the databases of many more customers,” says Ciccarelli. “And then we use BigQuery for log analysis and application consumption.”
Helping the customers’ customers
Many of MMB Software’s products are designed to help their customers extract value from their customer’s data whether that be when their car’s service is due or to discover what offers they might be interested in. To gain these insights it relies on Looker. “We work side by side with our customers to give value to the data they collect from their customers, and Looker helps us to leverage that data and create customized analysis and metrics fast,” says Ciccarelli. Cloud Storage is also used to store customer data, such as e-invoices and service records, as well as other static assets and resources.
Next on the to-do list, MMB Software wants to migrate its full data store to Cloud Spanner in the next three years. This fully managed relational database, which it is already using for its online transactional processing, will help the business scale and grow its applications and will free the IT team from any database management tasks. “We also plan to do more with Looker,” adds Ciccarelli. “We would like to use Looker to further manage customer KPIs and deliver more insights that will help our customers to develop their businesses, because when our customers grow, we grow with them.”
“Google Cloud has probably saved us two developer roles, we consider it to be a key component of our business. It manages all of our technical challenges, so we can really concentrate on expanding the business.”
—Omar Montanari, Owner and Director, MMB SoftwareGrowing its product line without growing its development team
And while MMB Software continues to expand its product line, the versatility and scalability of Google Cloud means that it can do this without significantly expanding its development team, highlights Montanari. “Google Cloud has probably saved us two developer roles, we consider it to be a key component of our business. It manages all of our technical challenges, so we can really concentrate on expanding the business. And, as an added bonus, I really like that the Google Cloud console reports how much carbon our app is producing, as we are trying to make our business more sustainable too.”
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
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About MMB Software
Headquartered in Faenza, MMB Software specializes in the design and production of car maintenance and management software solutions for Italy’s vehicle servicing and repair industry.
About Injenia
Google Cloud Premier Partner Injenia drives business and digital transformation in top Italian companies through innovative projects and cloud transformation, app modernization, data management, and machine learning.