Cloud7

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Director of Database Development at a marketing database services company, primarily services large retail clients.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Cloud7?

We needed a cloud solution to house data and APIs to integrate with a mobile app service from a third party.

What were your goals for this project?

We need a solution that was flexible in both the schema and syncing requirements, as the scope was changing rapidly from our clients end.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We had engaged Cloud7 previously for other solutions over the last year, both with on-prem and cloud related development.

Describe the project in detail.

We needed to sync unstructured data from an on-prem source to AWS DynamoDB, but also needed to make sure that we kept our costs minimal. The project not only calculates the minimum data-delta required, but throttles the write units down when we are not writing.

What was the team composition?

We dealt with Nick Fursa, who was a gem to work with, and proved invaluable in ascertaining issues and solving them.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We had a working solution from inception to UAT in 30 days. The resulting mobile app integration has been integral to our clients continued success.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The process was an extremely fast development cycle, so we forgoed the usual milestones. Daily communication on progress and setbacks were needed, and had no issues with Cloud7.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

It's always clear that Cloud7 understands that the solution delivered is technology agnostic. If another technology or service will work better, they are eager to take it on and adept at doing so.

Are there any areas for improvement?

We couldn't be more pleased with the results.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of an end-to-end agency that focuses heavily on e-commerce clients and builds software products as well. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Cloud7?

I wanted an IVR solution.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We have offices in different countries and time zones. They created an IVR solution that directs customer calls to the right offices at the right times for technical support or business help. For instance, during off-hours in Los Angeles, I wanted inbound calls to be directed to our offshore offices. 

What is the team composition?

I mainly worked with Nick (CEO) to ensure calls were being directed correctly. 

How did you come to work with Cloud7?

We have a mutual contact, who referred me to their services based on an IVR project they had done together. They seemed confident they could provide me with a similar solution. 

How much have you invested with them?

The total spend came out to $20,000–$22,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve worked together from March–June 2020.  

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’re now using the system that they built and are pretty happy with what they’ve achieved. I’ve also been impressed with their support since the launch of the product. They’re always willing to address small problems and make updates as needed. 

Prior to their work with us, I was receiving calls late at night that should’ve been going to other offices. Since then, I haven’t received any calls after-hours. The system is able to identify whether a question is about sales or something technical, routing the customer to the best place to receive assistance. Because the system is more smooth internally, external clients have grown more trust in our support services over the phone. 

How did Cloud7 perform from a project management standpoint?

We were given a general timeline and milestones at the start of the project, and they’ve stuck to those. I appreciated their willingness to send me meeting information prior to our standups. That ensured that we were all prepared to get to the mission of the meeting. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They listened to my requirements and recommended even better ways of achieving my goals. We ended up saving quite a bit of money taking their advice. They took an active role in figuring what would be best for the lifetime of the project rather than just the initial rollout.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I’m very happy with how the project went. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Educate yourself on the industry before engaging with them. There are many pricey systems out there that may be obsolete by the time you take on the project. Keeping your approach simple definitely applies in these relationships as well.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a principal software engineer at an organization that aggregates online orders for restaurants to simplify their online ordering process.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Cloud7?

We had a combination of cost and performance issues on our existing platform. We initially launched on Google Cloud Platform, using specifically Google App Engine. The platform works well in terms of its regular operation, but the reporting structures are not there.

Internally, we had put something together using an SQL Server on Azure, but the process of getting data to the reporting engine and getting people access to their data was very slow.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Cloud7 helped us develop a platform that would make the process simpler for restaurants. They added functionality that enables the platform to report on available inventory, revenue, top orders, etc. 

The team used Google Pub/Sub to push data directly to the AWS platform. They also set up some API gateways and Lambda functions to ingest data right into Amazon Redshift.

Additionally, Cloud7 wrote an API so that our frontend developers could make calls through those APIs. We were able to keep our existing reporting structure in place while the team developed the new structure side by side.

We would then switch over groups of clients at a time to make sure that everything was okay. The team also helped us understand the solution so that we could take over after they had completed the project. 

What is the team composition?

I had two points of contact. 

How did you come to work with Cloud7?

I had met my two points of contact in working with them at my previous job. I knew that they were both very competent. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $70,000–$80,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from February 2019–January 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The quality of the platform was great, and we were pleased with how everything turned out. We’re now getting all of our order data into the reporting platform almost immediately. If anything takes upwards of 2–3 minutes, that’s a very slow timeframe for us now.

Before, it could’ve been up to an hour. Cloud7 solved our speed problem, which we’re very happy about. They’ve helped us make life easier for our customer service team because they don’t get complaints from customers about the speed anymore. 

How did Cloud7 perform from a project management standpoint?

I enjoyed working with Cloud7 because they were sharp and had the tools to do the work. We had exciting brainstorming sessions at the beginning of the project. We primarily used Google Docs to keep track of everything. 

Additionally, they were always available to answer my questions and help us. Both of our contacts understood the project very well.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They understood our problems and the technology that was available to solve them. They came up with a solution that we were all excited about. 

Cloud7 was able to help document and teach everyone on our team what they had been doing. They truly kept us in the loop throughout the process. They also made the transition very easy for us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, nothing stood out.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Take the time to brainstorm with them. It’s helpful to get to know each other and for Cloud7 to understand the project. By giving them a broad overview of what we were trying to get done, the team was able to help us come up with a better solution than if we’d just asked them to put in some code here and there.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the manager of data engineering for a medical device company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Cloud7?

We were building a large-scale, metadata-driven data system, and we needed some expertise and really good talent to drive the initiative at an accelerated pace.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Cloud7 helped us build out large parts of an enterprise-scale, cloud-based, low-latency data system. We use a three-layered data system – a classic Lambda data-processing architecture — along with Lambda functions in AWS. We had Cloud7 focus on our speed and streaming later. They planned and designed a robust structure to ensure we had high, lossless data quality and a high level of resilience and recovery in the data system. They then built it out.

What is the team composition?

We worked with just one person from Cloud7. It turned out that was all we needed. They performed as well as 4–5 typical engineers. 

How did you come to work with Cloud7?

We were referred to them from a friend, so we went ahead and reached out. Once we interviewed a candidate, we thought it was a good fit. We had looked at other candidates and recruiting services, but they weren’t producing the best candidates. Cloud7 blew us away. 

What is the status of this engagement?

The project ran for six months, from October 2019 to March 2020. We’re looking to get them back and finish the contract on a month-to-month basis once COVID-19 is past.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Their quality of work was fantastic. Everything was thoroughly thought out, well-tested, and highly documented. We could come to Cloud7 and describe a problem and what we were trying to achieve, and they’d look at our codebase and write a solution that fit with our existing code and solved our problem without any waste. They really got to the source of any problem, solved it efficiently, and left us with a solution that will be long-lasting and -serving to the company.

How did Cloud7 perform from a project management standpoint?

They came into our team and ramped up fairly quickly as if they were a team member. The whole process was seamless. While managing the project, Cloud7 was detailed in everything they were doing. We used Jira to track all of our tickets. They regularly added things to our tickets such as when they fixed a bug or added a feature. If anything changed, the team let our project managers know so they could fix or add to the appropriate tickets. Overall, it was a very good experience. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

It was insane how quickly they got up to speed and how much work they were able to accomplish in six months. We were able to build four different systems in six months. I’ve never seen anything like that before. Beyond those systems, we had some backlog and data integrations requests to get through, and they were able to get a chunk of those done, too. Cloud7 truly went above and beyond.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We’d love more rock stars like the person we got. I’d encourage Cloud7 to grow and keep up the intensity. Other than that, it was a really good experience. 

Any advice for potential customers?

Try your best to have a well-defined problem. Otherwise, there can be a lot of waste. We had a well-defined problem about we had to get done. Once Cloud7 clarified all their questions and gathered all the requirements, we were able to let them go and receive something that we were happy with.