10Clouds

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are developing a Chrome curriculum and pupil development extension for Google Classroom. I am one of the founders.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with 10Clouds?

The main challenge was to find a skilled full-stack developer. We had worked with teams before, but I wanted to find a single person with vast knowledge about backend, frontend, security, and APIs.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

10Clouds work on our extension. It’s a mission control for schools, handling student assignments in classrooms. After a teacher creates an assignment, they can input knowledge requirements from the curriculums for that assignment, which are visible to students. The platform collects all assignments and assessments for a class at the end of the semester, producing an overview of students, and in-putting grading.

When an assignment is clicked on it can be retrieved in the sidebar, which makes navigating through the Google Classroom environment easier and more seamless. It’s a database-driven extension using Google APIs, as well as Django Python and JavaScript.

What is the team dynamic?

Initially, we used a single full-stack developer, a project manager, and a tester. After 3 months, we brought in a frontend developer for CSS and HTML work. At its peak, we had 2 backend developers, 1 frontend developer, a coder, and a project manager.

We have gone back to the initial composition at the moment. We also have an in-house interaction designer who provides the specifications we send to 10Clouds.

How did you come to work with 10Clouds?

It’s hard to find developers in Sweden, which is where we’re located. Poland is close and it’s a less expensive source of talent. We checked Clutch.co and other places and saw that 10Clouds was based in Warsaw. It’s one hour away by plane, so we could go to them in the morning and come back in the evening for full-day workshops. I visited them 2 months ago and plan to go there again.

How much have you invested with them?

The cost of their work so far has been around $150,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with 10Clouds in April 2017. The project is ongoing. We have customers and a full working system, but software is never finished.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We have 5 customers at the moment, with 300 students for each one, which totals 1,500 users. The business idea in itself has been a factor in this success, but 10Clouds made it work. We are really happy with them.

How did 10Clouds perform from a project management standpoint?

We have daily 15-minute scrum meetings each morning with the development team. Every other week, we have a sprint-planning meeting. We use Slack for communication, and everything is entered in JIRA, so that we can prioritize tasks and issues. We make new releases every 2 weeks.

They understand our requests, and, if something is wrong, they adjust it accordingly. We have daily meetings during which we discuss our progress and ongoing tasks. The communication is great; if we post a question on Slack, they answer immediately.

What did you find most impressive about them?

In order to deploy a release in the evening, our developer can work evenings to secure the release if needed. This has never been a problem, and he is always flexible. I've worked with many software companies, and I can say that 10Clouds has a team of skilled developers." 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I know that they are growing and onboarding many more developers. It is possible to grow too fast, but, if that’s their business strategy, it’s up to them. A smaller business can be controlled better, but there’s nothing for me to complain about. 10Clouds conducts good checks when employing new personnel, in order to find good, qualified people.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

This is one of the best teams in Poland. They are qualified and listen to clients’ needs.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

I am a professor of computer science at an accredited research university.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with 10Clouds?

Even though I haven't taken part in many development projects, we occasionally have the need for a development component for certain products, which we're trying to support. In this case, we wanted to develop a website for public health researchers. We did some initial research and put together some ideas for it before going out to have it built. 

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

10Clouds has been involved in all of the actual building, including design and implementation of the system. 10Clouds built a media aggregation and monitoring platform. We can use it to input many news stories daily, which are relevant to the public health issues that we want to track. After that, the news stories are downloaded and sent to an analysis pipeline, which does things like identifying the topic of the story and its language, translating it into English, as well as retrieving information like the global focus of the story. The analyzed story is thrown into a search engine database, and the website itself is where content is displayed. It allows us to make complex searches for any structured fields as well as keyword searches. The website also allows us to create alerts and count how many stories have been published about a topic in a certain language. There is also an analytics component: we can see how many news stories were published in a given topic, over a period of time, compared to another topic, and broken down by language.

There is a pipeline of decisions within the system. Some of these modules were developed in our lab while 10Clouds only integrated them and others were developed by them. 

Our team from 10Clouds has changed in time, but we've consistently had two full-stack Python developers and a program manager assigned to us. In addition to them, we've also worked with a website developer in charge of JavaScript and HTML coding, depending on what we needed on the site. 10Clouds has been very good at finding people, which can be rotated as our needs grew and changed. We've also used a DevOps person who worked on our servers. Whenever we go through a design phase, we will use a designer from 10Clouds.

How did you come to work with 10Clouds?

I have a colleague who is a professor at another university. I was very unhappy with the developers that we were using at the time, so we started by trying to hire our own developer. I interviewed a dozen people, but only one person was even remotely qualified. We came to hire another company, but I wasn't very happy with them, either. I looked around for other options, and my colleague recommended that I try 10Clouds. I'm glad that he made the suggestion.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

The cost varies quite a bit, but we have typically spent between $10,000 and $15,000 per month during the last three years with 10Clouds, depending on how many people are working with us at any given time.

What is the status of this engagement?

We have been working with 10Clouds for three years [since 2013].

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Our project is research-funded, so our budget is renewed on a yearly basis. The fact that we've had our funding renewed year after year means that the funder is pleased with what we're producing. This is the best measure of success, in my opinion.

I've come to default to 10Clouds for any project that requires development work, whether it's a large-scale one or we just need to throw up a website. 10Clouds is very fast, responsive and easy to work with. They have many in-house members who can cover a full range of things so, whenever we need to do a lot of back-end Python, Django, HTML or CSS development, 10Clouds will assign us resources who are experienced with the various tools that we are using. Whenever we needed to rethink a prototype from a design perspective, 10Clouds gave us a designer. There's been much flexibility on their part.

We had used other companies in the past, but 10Clouds was much better in terms of communication, and they produced good work. 10Clouds has actually rewritten a lot of the code produced by other people because it simply wasn't very good. It's not just that I've been happy with their work on our current projects, but they've done a better job than the people who worked on our previous projects.

How did 10Clouds perform from a project management standpoint?

Being a professor of computer science, I'm probably different to most customers. I had no problems managing the team from 10Clouds. I am very hands-on with them and probably know the code base as well, if not better than 10Clouds. I've been involved in the project since conception, whereas new developers from 10Clouds will come in every year. We don't work with 10Clouds based on estimates that they're supposed to stick to. We have a collaborative process. If anything takes longer to complete, it won't be a huge surprise because I understand why it's taking longer. For what we've been able to build, 10Clouds has been a very cost-effective solution. They do good work quickly and aren't very expensive.

We use JIRA for project tracking. We also have weekly calls using Google Hangouts, and we use Slack for communication.

What distinguishes 10Clouds from other providers?

I have frequent contact with 10Clouds's CEO [Maciej Cielecki], who reaches out to me just to see how things are going. Whenever I have a problem, I can contact him. He's been hands-on whenever we needed it and left us alone for the rest of the time. With any software project that goes on for this long, not everything will turn out right. I've always felt that we were able to sit down with 10Clouds and work any problems out, which gave me a lot of confidence in their judgment and abilities. When a developer says that a certain approach is the right way to do it, I will trust them. This is something that took a long time to develop.

Is there anything 10Clouds could have improved or done differently?

Through the years, there have been improvements that I've pushed to 10Clouds, including being more communicative with me about what's going on. This was because I was treated the same as most clients, who don't necessarily care about what library was being used, or what the right way or restructuring code was. I'm very involved, so I've encouraged 10Clouds to keep me in the loop about those things, and they have. There have been around half a dozen developers assigned to our projects through the years. The people working with us now are the best ones since the project started, so I'm very happy with 10Clouds at this moment. A new developer has been assigned to us today, and I'm excited about this. She seems to be very good. I think that we will continue to improve our efficiency.

I manage research labs and am looking for new funding. When I find it, I intend to give it to 10Clouds for them to do the work.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We're a startup in the health tech field, building a digital therapeutic system for gestational diabetes. Our company is focused on connecting women and technology for a healthier future.

I am the founder and Chief Executive Officer.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with 10Clouds?

We are working with10Clouds to build a digital therapeutic system for gestational diabetes.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

10Clouds designed and built a minimum viable product for GlucoseMama. They also created a series of wireframe screens to demonstrate how the system could potentially work. We're currently developing the backend, and will soon reach Version 1.0. We will be able to use Version 1 for pilot studies. Feedback from pilot and human factor studies will help guide us as we build Version 2 for larger clinical trials.

10Clouds provided two UX/UI [user experience/user interface] designers in charge of all visual and functional elements, an iOS developer, and a backend developer. We work closely with the project manager from 10Clouds, having weekly calls to plan sprints with his team. He is in charge of coordinating the 10Clouds team with the GlucoseMama team.

How did you come to work with 10Clouds?

I spend a lot of time in Poland and wanted to find a good development company that I could work with locally. I found 10Clouds through their website. They are a full service company with a high level of talent in all departments.

How much have you invested with 10Clouds?

10Clouds offers very competitive rates in the global app development market. They offer high quality for a very good price.

What is the status of this engagement?

We have an ongoing relationship with 10Clouds.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

10Clouds' quality of work has been excellent. The designs we received were far beyond what we expected. 10Clouds is a highly professional company that gets the job done and does it well. They're also very pleasant to work with, so I consider myself lucky.

How did 10Clouds perform from a project management standpoint?

They do a great job of communicating, both by Slack and e-mail.

What did you find most impressive about 10Clouds?

10Clouds is user focused. In my particular field, the users are patients, so it's extremely important to look at everything from their point of view and to satisfy their medical and nutritional needs. We also have to fit into the provider’s workflow without creating more work for them. We consult with doctors, nurses, diabetes educators, and nutritionists to figure out what they need from their patients’ records and how to deliver it to them securely and in a timely manner. Our system is HIPAA-compliant [Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act]. 10Clouds has been incredible in providing great ideas for this project, both for patients and providers.

Are there any areas 10Clouds could improve?

It's hard to say. We'd like things to move faster, but that usually amounts to more mistakes. Building safe and effective technology takes a lot of time, energy, and most of all, thought. Doing it well also takes skill. The build-out should be based on studies and feedback from intended users and healthcare providers.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

iPlay is a social platform for sports, something like a combination of LinkedIn and Instagram. At this point, we’re only focusing on handball, but we will take in football at the end of 2016, as well as hockey at the beginning of 2017. I am a co-founder of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with 10Clouds?

We had an idea of what we wanted to create, and we needed a developer who could do it. It didn't make sense to hire someone to do this because we needed more than just a coder, we needed a lot of different skill sets. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

10Clouds built our app originally for iOS only. They developed the back-end databases for Amazon Web Services. 10Clouds used some third-party products as well, for messaging and other functionalities. They helped us with everything from defining to coding.

When originally starting out, 10Clouds suggested that, before we move forward, we should change our logo type. I’d already paid someone to design it, but 10Clouds told me that they could do better, without additional cost. They presented their version after a few weeks, and we decided immediately that we would be changing our logo to the 10Clouds version.

I tend to write content and descriptions for the app. We’ve had to ask for a quick response in getting it released, due to an upcoming championship. 10Clouds took care of the quick review process for the iOS version.

They were always keen on listening to what we had to say and providing alternatives when necessary. 10Clouds has given us a good climate in which to work.

We’re still working on the product and plan to release the Android version of the app next week. At this point, around 12 members from 10Clouds are working for us, both backend developers, as well as UX/UI [user experience/user interface] designers. 10Clouds gave us the first setup, explaining why they picked those resources. We have meetings every 2 weeks, discussing how they performed and whether we should be assigned more senior or more junior resources, as necessary. Getting the best team possible has been an ongoing process. Resource changes have mainly been due to over qualification, which equated to us spending more money than necessary. There have been few occasions of this happening, but we do maintain communication to stay on top of it.

How did you come to work with 10Clouds?

We contacted our CTO [Chief Technology Officer] early on in order to translate our idea into something that could be understood by the developers. He has concentrated on outsourcing our IT development within the last year, and conducted a very thorough process, looking at firms in Ukraine, India, and Poland. His background research involved looking in on various forums for development companies. He often found 10Clouds being mentioned as one of the best firms in Poland.

We considered 5 companies in total. After making a few reference calls with previous customers, we determined that 10Clouds would be the best choice. They understood what we wanted to do and it seemed to us that they would likely do a great job. 10Clouds became part of our shortlist. The answers we got from them made us interested in a collaboration. We flew the 10Clouds team from Poland to Sweden and felt strongly from the start that they would be the ones with whom we’d be working. We haven’t regretted our decision. In fact, we didn’t bother meeting with any other company in person.

How much have you invested with 10Clouds?

So far, we’ve spent $150,000 on 10Clouds’ services. We work on a time-and-materials basis, discussing what needs to be developed for the upcoming period. The budget is not carved in stone. We make minor changes based on 10Clouds’ performance.

What is the status of this engagement?

We have been working with 10Clouds since October of 2015. The iOS app was released in January of 2016, while the Android version will be launched next week. We estimate that our work with 10Clouds will continue over the next few years.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

I follow the iOS app’s usage in order to see how it is performing. I’ve received messages from many users, saying that it is a fantastic app. It’s very reliable and we’ve had very few bugs. We’ve made many improvements to the app since its initial release.

How did 10Clouds perform from a project management standpoint?

We have a good in-house project manager. He has daily talks with the 10Clouds team through Slack and Google Hangouts, and we also have weekly calls with their two founders. Beyond this, we’ve visited 10Clouds three times in Warsaw, just to be able to walk alongside the team, high-five, and have workshops. Their English isn’t perfect, but it’s better than I expected.

We use Jira for project tracking. Slack is used for communication, and we have video calls through Google Hangouts. We’ve also added Google Analytics for our app, which offers us some key performance indicators. 10Clouds is helping us to set up a special database through which we can use Mixpanel in order to get hands on and analyze the app. 10Clouds is keen on using those tools. They want to know that they’re doing a good job, and they’re anxious to hear what can be changed in terms of interface or functionality.

10Clouds uses the scrum methodology fully, which has worked great. They’re keen on keeping to the schedule and delivering on time. There haven’t been few situations in which 10Clouds overpromised or had any issues.

What did you find most impressive about 10Clouds?

Our CTO is very pleased with 10Clouds. If he is able to say that they’re really good, then I believe him; this project has been his full-time professional job for 4 years. I think that it’s important for a client to have a clear vision of what they want to build. This was true in our case, which made the startup process easy. 10Clouds interviewed us about some considerations for the product, how sophisticated it should be, and how it should look. 10Clouds did a good job in defining both what the product should be and how it should be presented.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

Our service consists of an app and a website. We help people identify and avoid unknown and unwanted callers. From a technical perspective, we've tried to solve the problem of keeping one version of the phone book up to date, for all of our users, so they will know who's calling or texting them, and make an intelligent decision about answering or responding.

What is your position?

I'm the founder.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with 10Clouds?

I have done remote development for a handful of companies, thus I'm comfortable working with remote teams. Doing your work with a remote company will lead to cost savings. The problem is that you're not in the same place, communication sucks, deadlines get missed – it's chaos. I've worked with engineers in Poland and was impressed with them. When I was looking at a team to hire, we looked at who was on the speaking circuit in Poland. 10Clouds was a company that came up. There was social proof already for them. If you're at an app development conference, they'll be one of the featured attendees, either in Poland, Slovakia, or other countries in the region. It's a good indicator as far as who's in that ecosystem already.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

They worked on our iOS app. The technologies used were Swift and Xcode. Our stack is Amazon Web Services. 10Cloud is actually a Python shop, and we started out in PHP. They've basically hired in order to support us in that capacity. We've used them for both mobile and web development. They're our entire team.

There are between five and eight developers working for us at any given time, and they're assigned by 10Cloud. I think they're terrific at hiring. As an entrepreneur and as a founder, I was keen on building it as quick as possible, and there've been multiple instances when they've told us they don't have the technical resources to build something at the time, but they can hire. I've been consistently impressed with the people they've brought in, and with their ability to admit they're not ready for something. In my experience with other offshore teams, people will say yes to just about anything, when they're not well-suited to do it.

How did you come to work with 10Clouds?

It was through Google searches.

What is the status of this engagement?

It's an ongoing relationship.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

We have more than 300 five-star reviews in the App Store. That's a testament to what they've built. Other than that, I don't have any kind of metrics or figures.

How did 10Clouds perform from a project management standpoint?

They made the suggestion of using Atlassian, so Confluence and JIRA, for project management. From a design standpoint, we're using nVision. We started the business with them, so we're different from other companies that may have had existing teams in house. 10Clouds was going to be the team from the beginning.

What distinguishes 10Clouds from other providers?

Our product manager is in Argentina, our design team was in Thailand, and the tech team is in Warsaw, 10Cloud. We went to Warsaw earlier this year, we sat down in their office, and I was impressed with the experience. I spent three to four years in Silicon Valley, I have friends who run tech companies, and 10Cloud's offices would stack up with anything I've seen in the Valley. They've got a meticulous approach to Scrum development and they've built a culture around it. It was an impressive office visit.

Is there anything 10Clouds could have improved or done differently?

Something we've done in the past months is to build redundancy around some of the key people in the team. For instance, we have a system admin who is very close to the project at 10Clouds. He's been sick, and it became clear that we needed some redundancy around him.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company.

My company offers online materials that help people become literate in English and other languages to children or to anyone learning to speak either their first language or a foreign language.

What is your position?

I’m the founder.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Could you describe the business challenge that you were attempting to address when you first approached 10Clouds?

I originally had some resources written in Flash. The problem was, the teachers wanted to make their own resources and record their work. Then, iPads came along, and they wanted something that worked on that. I decided to start from scratch again, but this time fix the deficiencies with the original product. I originally went to them with my Flash resource and had them update it and convert it to HTML5. After several months, I came up with a big change with animations for the program. They’ve been developing the product ever since. The concept has been so big, and we’re trying to get it right and make it a resource that the teachers need. They want everything in a single resource.

SOLUTION

Could you describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail?

They have provided all of the coding for the program. They’re doing the front end and back-end. Originally, the person who wrote the Flash was going to do the back-end, and he was writing in .NET. The current developers are writing in HTML5 and JavaScript. It was difficult to communicate between the two teams, and also get the two technologies to communicate. In the end, we decided that 10Clouds would take on the whole back-end as well. So, they’re storing all of my lessons on Amazon S3 and other databases, and they’re doing the whole solution.

How did you come to choose 10Clouds as your partner?

My former programmer recommended them as he had moved across the country to pursue another opportunity. We interviewed a number of different companies. I found them online by doing Internet searches for HTML5 developers, and then he interviewed them.

Could you provide a general cost estimate for this engagement?

It was in the $50,000 to $200,000 range.

What is the status of this project?

We haven’t finished yet, so it’s still ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, or user feedback that would demonstrate the quality of their performance?

My biggest client is a chain of schools in the Middle East. They like the Flash resources that they’ve already bought, but they want to bring their own device, and they’re interested in a similar resource using the same concept. When they asked for things, I haven’t done much user testing, but I’ve been checking for bugs and issues. I’ve received some feedback from teachers and students about what they wanted and have made changes here and there. My users have been impressed with the whole idea, concept, and the current state of it. In time, we’ve developed a very nice, intuitive design.

When working with 10Clouds is there anything that you would consider unique about their strategic approach or development methodology that distinguish them from other vendors?

I honestly can’t say because I have only had one other person working on it with me, so I don’t have the experience to answer that. I can say that I’m happy and satisfied with the choice of 10Clouds because I think they’ve got some great developers. I’m very pleased with the quality. Overall, I’m happy with how they’ve treated me. I would encourage people to use 10Clouds.

In retrospect, are there areas in which you think they could improve as a service provider?

There have been some issues with the running of the project. It’s overrun in terms of time and budget, but it’s difficult to pinpoint culpability. A lot has been due to me, I would say. Looking back, I didn’t have a clear enough original design proposal, and during the process, I came up with some new ideas, one of which is a great improvement on the Flash product. This has been hugely impactful both in terms of the complexity of the programming, and the extent of the development time required. I think that we could have tried to look at the bigger picture more, as there were times when I knew what we had wasn’t right, but didn’t know what was.

User testing, we said we’d set this up, but haven’t set up a testing area as much as we could have. Again, I think I am at fault here, too. Other development issues took more of a priority. However, I’m not at the MVP stage, designing a product for unknown users, not knowing whether they’ll like the product or not, trying to find product-market fit. I already have a client base who have bought and are using the Flash product, but have asked for certain, general, improvements, such as working on tablets. The design process has been about delivering these.

Ultimately, though, I believe if you want to create something that is both valuable and differentiates you from the crowd, there will be times when the ride is a bit bumpy. I have to say that these issues are minor when compared to the overall quality of the product that (version 1.0) we now have. These kinds of projects are very difficult to steer and manage, especially when you don't have a lot of experience doing so. 

BACKGROUND

Could you briefly describe your organization?

We develop data mining technology that aggregates information about scientific materials and equipment, and the researchers and laboratories around the world that use these materials and equipment. We’re developing a platform to connect various people in the R&D [research & development] ecosystem, so people responsible for research, scientific suppliers providing materials and equipment to do the research, also people who are interested in these experts and the research that they conduct.

What is your position?

I’m the co-founder.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Could you describe the business challenge that you were attempting to address when you first approached 10Clouds?

We didn’t have experience with Web development. We were looking for an external Web developer who could help us put a prototype platform together, to see if we could start connecting some people. We approached a lot of different companies in the U.S., U.K., India, and 10Clouds in Poland. We’re doing something unique that is very data driven. It’s not a cookie-cutter website that we could just plug our data into. So, we had the challenge of finding someone who was competent enough to understand what we were doing and make a custom solution at a reasonable price.

SOLUTION

Could you describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail?

They put our front-end together. We have some data that we plug into a front-end that they entirely created, which is written in AngularJS. We used a Django administration panel, and they have implemented custom logic that we use to search through our database and return results on our platform. They’ve also done a bit of work on the side for us, using Mechanical Turk to collect some information, stuff that can’t be collected purely by computer but needs some human interaction.

How did you come to choose 10Clouds as your partner?

We contacted a number of companies, and based on their responses, we felt a lot of those companies didn’t have good answers for how they would go about solving our problem. They were accustomed to dealing with simple websites for companies, and e-commerce shops, and cookie cutter websites. My co-founder was in the computer science department at John Hopkins in the states, and some of his colleagues had worked with 10Clouds previously. They provided very logical and sensible approaches to some of the challenges we needed to solve. We felt most confident in their abilities, so we decided to give them a shot.

Could you provide a general cost estimate for this engagement?

It was $20,000 to $25,000.

What is the current status of the project?

The project started a year and a half ago and remains ongoing, off and on.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, or user feedback that would demonstrate the quality of their performance?

I don’t think I have any direct metrics, most of what we collect are related to our business model. I don’t think I could provide anything other than we have had very few bug reports. For the most part, we have experienced minimal technical issues with functionality and usability, which is great.  

From a project management perspective, it’s been satisfactory, but not fantastic. I think this is probably due to the fact that we’re off and on. When we do come to them with work, it takes a little while to get something going because their resources are allocated elsewhere. Largely, that’s just the nature of our working relationship. We have had a few different project managers. The one we have right now I find extremely proficient. Other ones that we’ve worked with, we felt we had to chase a bit at times, so it does vary with the project manager. In terms of staying within scope and budget, they’ve been pretty good. I think the quotes have always been on the optimistic side, and often they have made a bit of effort to do their best to get it all done within quote.

When working with 10Clouds, is there anything that you would consider unique about their strategic approach or development methodology that distinguish them from other vendors?

Whenever we have technical challenges and have been asking for things that are unique to do, they always seem to have a solution. We have yet to throw a challenge at them that they weren’t able to solve. There’s no doubt that they have some serious technical talent on their team.

In retrospect, are there areas in which you think they could improve as a service provider?

No. I think the products that they have delivered have always been of extremely good quality. More consistency on the project management end of things might be my only recommendation, but our current project manager has been great.

What advice, if any, would you give a future client of theirs before approaching them with a new project?

Give yourself reasonable lead time because they are a small firm. You need to plan accordingly, and let them know that you’re looking to do some work so they can assign resources.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

[I teach a major university in] Pennsylvania.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I’m assistant professor in the computer and information science department.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your goal for working with 10Clouds?

My goal is to take research ideas that I’ve been developing with my Ph.D. students and then come up with a productized version of the research. They’ve helped me with several projects involving Amazon Mechanical Turk.  

These are projects that started with Ph.D. students on the research side and so we wanted to have a demonstration model so I could show how the research works and to scale it up and make it more robust and user-friendly.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their work.

They have provided the kind of software engineering infrastructure that we need after we complete the research. They do a lot of the back-end steps so building on APIs [application programming interfaces] that will interact with Amazon Mechanical Turk and create tasks there and manage the money to doing things like logins via Facebook or Google and credit card processing.  

Plus, they’ve been awesome at developing user interfaces and jQuery, Web2.0. [It was] very nice looking stuff. I came up with the spec and they worked to that.

What was your process for selecting 10Clouds with which to work?

I was recommended to them by another academic. He is a professor at [another university]. I did a competitive bidding process with the university, and they outbid the other contractors that I was looking at. As an academic, it’s hard to recruit research programmers to work with me because the budget is usually far less than people really deserve or the market would allow them if they were working outside a university. They offered a good skill set, a long-term relationship, and competitive pricing.

Can you give a sense of the size of the initiative in dollar terms or a personnel work-hour figure?

It was from $10,000 to $50,000

When was the work completed?

I’ve been working with them longer than I’ve been at the university. I worked with them at [another] university at their center for language and speech processing. This is still ongoing work. I think we’ve been working together for about three years currently.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Do you have any statistics or metrics to track improvement from the project?

It’s more qualitative stats than real metrics.

Are you satisfied with their performance?

Their performance has been great. They’ve developed several nice websites for me. I’ve developed a database that I use to show off my research to other academics. It’s got a nice API that other researchers are using.

I’ve got an impressive demo of my crowdsourced translation work. I’ve got another one, which is a nice tool for Amazon Mechanical Turk workers to find higher paying jobs.

All of these deliverables are excellent. It was well engineered and well developed. I was very happy with all of them, and I’ve hired them to start on a new project as well.

Is there anything unique or special about 10Clouds that really makes them stand out compared to other business partners?

Pricing is excellent. Their knowhow on services like Amazon Mechanical Turk, their python prowess is really great. They communicate really well. We have weekly or twice weekly meetings on Google hangouts. They’ve got a great Web tracking system where they use Ajera, and it’s all clear.

What advice would you give to future clients of theirs?

I think projects that have very clear specs, coming from an academic perspective might be slightly different from a commercial perspective. I think when you’ve got a well-worked-out research idea where you know what all the subcomponents are, but don’t necessarily have the resources to do the engineering yourself, then they work extremely well. I think the project goes more smoothly when you give a quick response to them when they ask for feedback.

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or that you might do differently?

I think all their work has been pretty good. Some of the things are pretty standard that they could improve on. Maybe slightly better quality assurance. I feel like I’ve done a little bit more of that than I ought to have. I don’t really have any strong complaints about them.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Product Owner/Manager for software build

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire 10Clouds?

Internal software UX/UI

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Through their dribbble account

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

Internal tool using for palnning

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

1 as a UX/UI designer

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We were able to design a full web app thats new to the industry from the ground up

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Great

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

The team has impressive talents.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

None at all

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the communications associate for the institute.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire 10Clouds, and what were your goals?

refresh our website with a focus on social media integration and better presentation of our online courses.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

after a referral we felt they were the best suited for our needs.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

scope of work was large and very detailed with the vendor hitting all marks through the entire process.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

10 various titles to remember

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

not tat th emoemnt

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

thorough and detail oriented.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

They were very nice and easy to work with. They were also responsive to our ideas and input.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

none