Openness Customer Spotlight: Software Development Company Launches Secure Mobile Banking App with Windows Azure

Posted by Heriyadi Janwar
Microsoft Indonesia, Product Marketing Manager

The combination of high cell-phone usage and low desktop internet penetration in Indonesia is fostering a vibrant market for mobile applications. In 2013, software-development company Sangkuriang Internasional targeted this opportunity in mobile banking, creating EMASS (Encrypted Messaging and Secured Services), a secure instant messaging service that allows financial institutions to make payments via cell phones.

To launch EMASS as a service, Sangkuriang needed a cost-effective way to host the EMASS backend systems for each mobile app.

“We are a software-development company, not a service provider. We wanted a partner to host EMASS for us, but their service had to be reliable, easy to work with and affordable,” said Oka Sugandi, Director of Sangkuriang Internasional. “For financial institutions to trust us, it also had to be 100 percent secure.”

Sangkuriang also needed to select a cloud service that worked well with the wide range of EMASS technologies, including Linux for core server messaging, and support multiple device platforms, including Windows, iOS, Blackberry, and Android.

Sugandi evaluated several options, including Amazon Web Services, before selecting Windows Azure.

“We chose [Windows] Azure because all things being equal, it was the easiest cloud platform to work with,” said Sugandi. “Although we used Linux and Java to create our payments messaging system, [Windows] Azure can easily handle them because of its open architecture.”

In mid-2013, Sangkuriang began offering EMASS to banks and the service became an instant success. Given its proven security and reliability, financial institutions are now trusting Sangkuriang to create new services for their customers. 

For more on the ease of deployment and cost savings associated with Sangkuriang’s Windows Azure solution, please see the complete case study.