AFour Technologies

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for IHS Markit. We have a business line called RootMetrics, which focuses on mobile analytics or mobile performance benchmarking. We measure carrier performance with our proprietary scientific collection of data, as well as with cloud data. I’m the director of the engineering team.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with AFour Technologies?

Finding top talent was a challenge. It doesn’t mean that there’s none out there, but, compared to big tech companies, it was a challenge for us. We’ve primarily gone to them for QA testing, as well as for DevOps and web development. We rely on AFour Technologies to provide high-quality engineers when a new project comes up and we need to go to market as soon as possible so that we can spend less time training them and explaining the technology.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We required resources that were proficient in open-source technology and AWS. We have initial interviews with the team members. AFour has a team in India, but they have an office in Seattle, so we can reach out to them easily. They also have reasonable pricing, and that was an important factor. One of the advantages we have with AFour is that we can always find good people to work with us and deliver products faster.

What is the team composition?

We’re working with around six people from their team right now.

How did you come to work with AFour Technologies?

My manager at the time looked at a couple of companies and found AFour. I interviewed them when I took over management in 2016.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with AFour in May 2015, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The cost-saving has been a plus, and the quality of their people is pretty good. When we needed a web developer or another resource in a short period of time, they were able to find someone in their team.

How did AFour Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

There are a couple of people from my team who attend daily calls with AFour, and there are people on their side who ensure that the team is working correctly. Everything is getting done on time, and we can work everything out with the team lead over there. AFour has additional resources for the remote team, who can jump on quickly if we need to ramp up.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They always have a couple of people shadowing the team. Someone left their company a couple of years ago, and they were able to quickly add someone else. That was done quickly, rather than getting someone completely new and requiring a knowledge transfer.

Their representative in the US calls me regularly to discuss the work and find out if there are any issues with the team. The relationship has been good. They’re always looking to make improvements and always asking us for feedback.

Right now, we’re developing an SDK for iOS and Android, and we wanted to make sure that we were doing testing on the latest devices. India is really locked down right now, more so than the US. People can’t go out, but they somehow still managed to get the latest devices to ensure that everything was working. This is a great example of what makes them stand out.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I haven’t really come across anything.  There were some initial challenges, but it’s been going smooth for at least the last three years.

Their rates are really reasonable. We’re mostly going with the 2015 rate. AFour is always trying to work with us and to help us as much as they can.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

It’s important for clients to find the best manager possible. AFour has a pretty solid background for support. We started out with testing and expanded to security, AWS, and DevOps.They have reasonable rates, but that doesn’t mean that they deliver cheap quality.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of Stellus Technologies, a cloud data company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with AFour Technologies?

Our testing environment required an additional set of resources. We also needed the hardware investment that we made to be used 24/7.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We started off with a very specific goal: we needed AFour Technologies to do a security sweep of the product that we were building to ensure that there were no known security exploits that can be taken. They brought in one person who had very good experience, and we were very impressed with them.

We then decided to expand AFour Technologies’ work. They came back with a proposal to run additional tests overnight for the local team in the U.S. That’s how we got the bigger bang for the buck. There were a few people involved in that particular project.

The second part was that running tests manually was extremely painful and slow. We wanted to develop some automation scripts so we could automate a lot of the QA tests and run them 24/7. We added a few more people to do that. 

What is the team composition?

We started off with one person who is still our project lead. The CEO is based out of the U.S. and we talk to him quite a bit. We have anywhere from 10-12 people on the team supporting us.

How did you come to work with AFour Technologies?

Very few people have the security background to do what we need to do. We started with that and it gave us the opportunity to evaluate some of the other people as they were doing things. What really impressed us was their quality of work. The security work was very well done. It was on budget and on time. It gave us a lot of confidence that they were very professional and efficient in what they do. We interviewed a bunch of those people, and our suspicion turned out to be correct.

How much have you invested with them?

We spend about $300,000 per year.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in November 2017 and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The quality of work AFour Technologies produces is really good. We have a joint statement of work and specifically expect a certain number of people doing a certain amount of testing. Most metrics are around how many tests they’re running and how many automation scripts they’ve developed for us. They’ve met our goals and expectations so far and even give us recommendations on how to fix any issues.

How did AFour Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

Every member of the AFour Technologies team is very independent. When they’re working during the day time there, it’s the middle of the night here. We give specific instructions at the end of the day and they’re being very efficient, professional, productive, and responsive. 

We have regular meetings maybe once a quarter. The people who work for me meet them every week. They provide an update and discuss what needs to be done for the next week. They’re integrated into our scrum sprints. They’re very good at managing the project and being very communicative. We use Confluence and Jira.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re very happy with them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I found them lacking in C++ coding. Their focus is around DevOps, Cloud automation, and web development. It’s worked okay for us. We would have used other services had they had them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be sure you have a really good project lead on their side. That’s what made it successful for us.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and CTO of Trilio Data Inc.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with AFour Technologies?

We needed readily available talent to jumpstart our product development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They mostly work with cloud-related technologies like OpenStack and Red Hat Virtualization. Their team does all the DevOps processes that go with the development such as defining the CDC pipeline, end-to-end testing, and testing automation.

What is the team composition?

There are 25 people working with us. The team is comprised of developers, QA testers, a system administrator, and customer support staff. We still have the same resources for the last four years.

How did you come to work with AFour Technologies?

We interviewed a few companies. We were looking for DevOps skillset and AFour Technologies met this need. They also had good experience working with related companies.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $1 million per year (about $5 million total).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in October 2014 and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

When we hired the first person, we knew that we made the right choice. They do a good job finding the resources with the right technical skillset. We have customers all around the world, so sometimes we need to jump into a customer call to troubleshoot some issues. The team is very accommodating in taking calls. Their dedication is top-notch and they’ve never failed us.

How did AFour Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Slack, Hangouts, email, and Zoom Conference calls on a daily basis. Since they’re remote, communication is the most important thing. We have standup calls every morning our time and evenings their time. It works very well and we have good communication. The team always knows the context of the requests coming in and there’s not much confusion. They deliver good results.

The team owns the product from the start. From gathering the requirements to planning development cycles and delivering the product, they take ownership. This is motivating for the team to work hard.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m very happy with the results, as is the company at large. We’re in a challenging domain and the standard of technical aptitude needed is relatively high compared to other areas. We’ve been able to rely on them for our product development.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I have no complaints.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Communicate and give them ownership of the product. They will deliver. I would recommend anyone to partner with them.