Novafutur: Creating faster ways to maximize the value of data with Google Cloud
About Novafutur
The Novafutur platform delivers a comprehensive solution that allows organizations to understand and maximize the real value of their data, through the use of machine learning algorithms, advanced analytics, and automation.
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About Huware
Huware is a Google Cloud Premier Partner that helps organizations get the most out of their digital transformation journeys.
Novafutur creates, delivers, and deploys new features for its customers faster using Google Cloud solutions, which then helps these features get to market quicker than before.
- Developers can experiment more using Google Cloud solutions
- Looker becomes an integral part of Novafutur's reporting tool
- Enhancing scalability gives the company's developers and data scientists greater autonomy
Bringing new features to market faster
In the 21st century, data has become invaluable. It can drive key business decisions and keep smart businesses ahead of their rivals. The most innovative applications of data are automated and used to solve the bigger challenges that businesses face. Research reveals that businesses that base their decisions on data are 19 times more likely to be profitable. But how do you analyze and optimize your data to get the most out of it? That's where Novafutur comes in.
Founded in London in 2019, Novafutur is a cloud-native company that uses the power of advanced analytics and automation to help businesses understand and maximize the value of their data. It uses specialized service software that deploys individual data streams in real-time, quickly processing a high quantity of customer information using advanced deep learning. It employs advanced engines that are designed to be personalized and ready to sort dynamic customer data into models that aid marketing and outreach. Vincenzo Rocco, CEO, Novafutur, explains: "We do this by organizing the data in a better way, and gathering it through tools we use in real-time. Once this data enters our platform, we provide these companies with a number of tools to better use their data and allow them to see it from different perspectives."
After creating an initial proof of concept for its software, the Novafutur team quickly realized the agility it needed could only be found in Google Cloud. "Google Cloud offered us a more advanced solution than the other competitors in terms of machine learning and artificial intelligence, which was what we were looking for at the time", says Paulo Goncalves, COO, Novafutur. "And, of course, the Google name has a certain weight to it."
"Google Cloud offered us a more advanced solution than the other competitors in terms of machine learning and artificial intelligence, which was what we were looking for at the time. And, of course, the Google name has a certain weight to it."
—Paulo Goncalves, COO, NovafuturExtracting meaningful data with Looker
Speed is of the essence for Novafutur, as its customers need answers quickly. When it came to a cloud provider, the company was looking for the ability to scale. The speed at which data could be inputted was another key criterion, and the cost of storing data that was not being used was also important. Beyond that, Novafutur wanted the flexibility to be able to deploy more environments when needed or to try new technologies that could give it better benefits without the need to manage them. Google Cloud proved to be the right fit.
The Novafutur team also uses Looker, the Google Cloud advanced business intelligence platform, to quickly analyze and find insights in its datasets. Looker makes it easy for Novafutur to build a data exploration platform that makes its data accessible in a compelling, intuitive way. It has become an integral tool for the company, with Novafutur's Behavioural Insights team using it to create detailed reports, something which would be very complex to build from scratch. "We went through an initial phase where we properly integrated with Looker and prepared all the necessary documentation for future integrations for our teams," says Rocco. "And now Looker is basically an extension of our platform for the reporting side of things."
"We went through an initial phase where we properly integrated with Looker and prepared all the necessary documentation for future integrations for our teams. And now Looker is basically an extension of our platform for the reporting side of things."
—Vincenzo Rocco, CEO, NovafuturDelivering more for customers with Google Cloud
The Novafutur team uses a wide range of Google Cloud solutions to help deliver for its clients. James Davis, CTO, Novafutur, explains how the team gets the best from these products. "What we have is implementation points for our customers, which are webhooks. These are written in Golang on Google Kubernetes Engine clusters. We use Google Kubernetes Engine because of its scalability. We don't have to worry about virtual machines and it gives us finer control. And we use Golang because it has a small memory footprint, and it's a fast process that goes into Pub Sub. Then we have Dataflow going into BigQuery in some areas. We've also got it going through more data enrichment processes to pull other areas of data in for machine learning, and then into our algorithms. Then finally it goes back into BigQuery."
For alerts and embedding, Novafutur has Looker pointing to the BigQuery data and it also uses Cloud SQL, as the team often finds that it’s cheaper to get data using it. They also use Operations Suite (formerly Stackdriver) for alerting and monitoring.
The end of data limits
Although Novafutur has always been a cloud-first company, and did not have to migrate across from a legacy on-premises system, it can clearly see the benefits of working on Google Cloud. And scalability was a huge plus for Novafutur's data scientists when they hit data limits.
"It's easy to start hitting limits with on-premises machines, while with Google Cloud, we can just auto scale, and not deal with that issue," says Rocco. "And this can actually be done by data scientists that just want to train their models. Now, they don't need to contact a system admin or DevOps person to get the resources they need to train their models. Instead, they have access to the Google console. And when they need to actually train their model, they can just scale up their infrastructure, and then scale it down when it's done."
The Novafutur team's developers were also free to experiment with Google Cloud and do their proof of concept work quickly, without fearing the cost of failure. "Working on Google Cloud gives us the ability to fail fast, so that we can get better output and see if it's a good or a bad solution."
The benefits of this experimentation and speed of development are passed directly onto the company's customers. "With Google Cloud's solutions, if a customer requests a particular feature, we can quickly deploy it and help bring it to the market," says Rocco.
Looking to the future
Novafutur worked with Google Cloud Premier Partner Huware, who used their expertise to guide the company through its digital transformation journey. This process includes biweekly meetings to ensure that Novafutur is getting the best price and flexibility from its licensing arrangements, while keeping them up to date on the latest technology available from Google Cloud. Novafutur recently signed a three year contract to continue building on this work. "We’ve developed an excellent relationship with Huware," adds Rocco. "Their regular reporting has helped us gain insights into our cloud usage and related costs, enabling us to make optimizations that have been invaluable."
Novafutur's relationship with Google Cloud also goes from strength to strength, and the company is already planning big things for the future. "We have a major project we're working on that we're aiming to release in the next quarter or two," says Rocco. "We're trying to give clients the ability to customize the machine learning algorithms as much as possible. And Google Cloud will be integral in helping us achieve this."
"We have a major project we're working on that we're aiming to release in the next quarter. We're trying to give clients the ability to customize the machine learning algorithms as much as possible. And Google Cloud will be integral in helping us achieve this."
—Vincenzo Rocco, CEO, NovafuturTell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About Novafutur
The Novafutur platform delivers a comprehensive solution that allows organizations to understand and maximize the real value of their data, through the use of machine learning algorithms, advanced analytics, and automation.
About Huware
Huware is a Google Cloud Premier Partner that helps organizations get the most out of their digital transformation journeys.