Hailo: 'We built Hailo on AWS, and here's why we'll keep using it'

Platform automation lead Boyan Dimitrov believes AWS is still ahead of its rivals

App-based taxi booking firm Hailo built its business on top of Amazon Web Services (AWS) in a gentler age, when cloud infrastructure-as-a-service was mostly all fields - usually full of data centres.

But speaking to Computing at the AWS Summit in London yesterday, Hailo platform automation lead Boyan Dimitrov explained how the company has no intention - for now - of looking to other cloud upstarts.

"When we started, cloud computing was already a thing - thinking about compute power on a pay-as-you-go basis, and AWS was the main player," says Dimitrov.

"The other thing was, when you're starting a company, and especially if you're successful, you get a very quick burst of many new users, and have to scale operations very quickly.

"Scalability was the main driver really - it's great for start-ups, and great for start-ups that expect to grow rapidly."

Dimitrov says there was no tendering process to speak of bacause back in 2011, "AWS was the choice just because it was so far ahead of anything else".

"Cloud computing was just starting, with very few services. Azure was just starting at that point, so AWS was the choice. Also, the people who began at Hailo already had experience with Amazon, so that helped to transition into working with AWS."

For now, Hailo is more than happy to stick with AWS, but Dimitrov doesn't rule out a move away from Amazon in the future.

"As an engineer, of course I will always keep an eye on everything else," says Dimitrov. "Besides, when we put our platform on top of AWS, we did it in a way that would prevent us from being locked in. AWS provides APIs and tools to allow you to just use what you need, and go where you want later."

But Dimitrov has yet to find anything to tempt him away.

"What AWS still has, and what gives it momentum, is features. Managed services that lift the burden on you doing your own things. And Lambda (AWS' responsive compute service) and RedShift (data warehousing solution) are miles away from anything the other vendors have," says Dimitrov.

"But obviously, it could be a different story in five years, or even a couple of years," he adds.

Dimitrov describes Hailo as a microservices platform, with small, independent services breaking down into individual components that can be built on in an agile way. Hailo itself is a custom platform, built in-house and run on AWS. There is a lot of flexibility in building new features, and Dimitrov is particularly keen on the Amazon EC2 Container Service (ECS) as a way to keep developing and enhancing the service.

"We're talking, basically, about paying just for the infrastructure we use, and no more, rather than static resources," says Dimitrov.

"We're hoping to get there, but it's quite a complicated process. ECS coming along has meant we're able to start working with it pretty much after it's been released, and that was helpful. And we envision making this the glue between all AWS services."

Computing uses the word "elastic" and Dimitrov frowns.

"Yes, it's elastic, but we've been using that word since 2006," he says.

"Some things are not really elastic, and are not as elastic as you want them to be, and as software architectures mature, you can start seeing the benefit." AWS, it seems, is doing just a little more.

Dimitrov says the original Hailo platform was "quite data-centre-like", but when it switched to the microservice model after AWS came along, "about 30 per cent" of costs were saved. Hailo is now aiming for 40 per cent as it progresses.

"We're still trying to find solutiojns as far as the techology now allows, but I can see it going further with scalability," he explains.

"Our business is quite time-sensitive," Dimitrov continues.

"If it's raining in London, everybody wants a cab immediately. And this results in a traffic spike, so we want to be paying just for that in this moment. It's easy to explain, but in practice, actually doing it is less easy. If we're looking at 80 per cent flexibility across all resources, that's a lot of money, but right now it's around 50 per cent. This is where the costs savings are still to come."

So is Hailo planning to use AWS to challenge taxi app rivals such as Uber?

"For us it's simple - we just want to provide the best customer experience," he says.

"And for different markets, this means different things, so we try to understand the pain points in every place.

"And unlike Uber, we use licensed cabs so our passengers are safe being taken from A to B.

"We also care about our drivers," Dimitrov adds, pointedly. "So we've built a range of tools to make their lives happier and easier compared to our competitors."

Dimitrov is extremely complimentary about AWS' customer support - something that Amazon has been criticised a lot about in the past.

"The way it works with us is we have access to account managers, and they come to our office and we discuss - if we have issues - and then they keep us updated with what is happening, and that helps us put our efforts in the right places," he says.

"So for example, they'll keep us informed if Amazon is going to develop something that we were thinking of working on ourselves, which means we can divert our skills elsewhere.

"Also you need customer support when things go south, and so far we've had great experiences of that. They've always kept us up to date about what the problem is, potential resolutions and timeframes, so it's pretty good."

There's a feeling that Hailo's sticking with AWS for better reasons than just lack of choice - its platform is flexible enough to easily move to a new provider - or laziness; it's clearly a company aggressively pushing to keep up with new and old rivals in the space.

And it seems AWS is innovating just as earnestly as its customers to keep pulling new tricks out of the hat.