DevOpsProdigy

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a COO if an R&D company. We develop AI technologies to help individuals, teams and comnpamnies to get valuable insights from the communcation data

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire DevOpsProdigy?

We hired DevOpsProdigy to assist with launching and enhancing our google-like smart search assistant across Dropbox, Evernote, Gmail, Google Drive, OneDrive, Outlook, YahooMail, and Laptop, and more that “understands” human-like language and a user can search by description.

What were your goals for this project?

We needed a smooth and a fail-safe launch of the service expecting heavy loads of traffic in the very first days of release.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We have seen DevOpsProdigy effectively supporting other companies. When we reached them with our project requirements, they turned to be perfectly skilled for all the tasks. We also reached out some of their customers randomly (with the permission of the customers of course) to ask for a recommendation or feedback. And all the feedback was great.

Describe the project in detail.

The DevopsProdigy maintained our development and production environments, secured backups and provided 24/7 service support. They supported IaaC and provided vital FinOps services by assessing and optimizing our expenditures on infrustructure. Finally, they supported Elastic Search with a few terabytes of data.

What was the team composition?

We were provided with a designated manager and a couple of admins who thoughtfully adressed our round-the-clock inquiries.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The results met the expectations of the internal team.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We had a chat with DevOpsProdigy account manager, where we could send our requests or receive reports on the work done right off.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The team always stays in touch and makes us feel included in times of releases or significant updates.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Their SLA is already impressive - keep it this way!

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Goldbar Ventures is an online advertising company specializing in serving high volumes of targeted traffic for a selected group of Tier 1 advertisers. I'm the co-founder and CEO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire DevOpsProdigy?

We were looking for a company that can give us full technical support: from server management to website building and monitoring as well as special IT projects. We needed a company that can handle extremely high volumes of traffic, can react fast, and provide 24/7 support.

What were your goals for this project?

To build the infrastructure from scratch and maintain it so that it can handle the high volumes we were sending while maintaining robustness and 100% reliability.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We had prior interaction with the founder of DevOpsProdigy Mr. Jenay Potapov, on a different project and were very impressed by his dedication and knowledge.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Based on our requirements the team at DevOpsProdigy designed and built from scratch our whole IT infrastructure. They were also instrumental in developing ad hoc projects in an efficient and speedy fashion.

What was the team composition?

The team composed of a director and a large team of developers, IT specialists, and QA personal.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

The success of Goldbar Ventures had a lot to do with the fact that we had DevOpsProdigy on our side. Over the years and due to the nature of our business we encountered many emergencies which could have had a fatal effect on the company if not addressed properly and swiftly.

DevOpsProdigy had always been on our side during these times providing the necessary knowledge and capabilities to overcome these difficulties.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Project management usually required us to layout our requirements have a few discussions with the team to explain important points and from there on it was fire and forget. DevOpsProdigy would do the works usually to our complete satisfaction. If needed we would ask for some modifications and they would be completed on the spot.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Not only are they experts in their domains, but they are also available whenever needed and provide perfect outcomes. They are a very dedicated group of people who understand the needs of the client and give their heart and soul to make sure he's satisfied.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Not really. I seriously wouldn't change a thing about how this company operates. (As you can see I'm a big fan)

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of GeoZilla, a B2C company. We provide mobile applications that are focused on family safety and security. We integrate vacation services and IoT to provide these product features.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with DevOpsProdigy?

Our app is used by millions of families worldwide to keep an eye and make sure their children are safe and happy and that elderly folks are well. Uptime of the product is of paramount importance to us. 

We needed a team to provide the 24/7 support and uptime of our infrastructure and to make sure all our customers can get access to the platform at all times.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

DevOpsProdigy has a flexible framework to provide 24/7 support. Their primary function is helping make sure that all the systems are running smoothly. They’re able to integrate with our infrastructure and product and ensure that any time our team members aren’t available, they can cover all the issues that we have. 

In the early stages, they were a lot more involved with helping us architect and set up some of the infrastructure and backend components of our product. With time, we started to get our own internal architects and DevOps that worked closely with their team to accelerate and improve the different components that we had.

We run our backend using PHP on a self-hosted infrastructure. We use MySQL, Postgres, and MongoDB. We’re in the process of shifting that tech stack into AWS, which is going to provide us the scalability of the products that we provide. DevOpsProdigy is an integral part of the migration that we’re running.

What is the team composition?

They have a team of around 30–40 people that works with our project and on other projects as well. We have some team leads who are our first points of contact. Those team leads then distribute the work.

How did you come to work with DevOpsProdigy?

We found them through a recommendation. Historically, the business was founded in 2014, and shortly after, we engaged with them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $125,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in April 2015 and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They hit the bullseye. One of our main metrics is the response time to any queries that we may have. We have a service-level agreement (SLA) with them depending on the level of query that we have. We have some queries that are show stoppers and we have some priorities — high, medium, and low — in place for addressing those. DevOpsProdigy has been good at meeting those SLAs with us. We’re happy with that. 

The second metric we’ve measured them against is around system uptime. That’s making sure that the monitoring services that we have and ensuring our users have access to the services we provide. We’ve constantly aimed for 99% uptime. So far, we’ve been successful in achieving that.

How did DevOpsProdigy perform from a project management standpoint?

They work well. We use Slack. The majority of the requests are tracked through that Slack group. Our team creates technical requests and updates get fed into that Slack group effectively. They have very comprehensive proprietary monitoring tools that they’ve integrated into our infrastructure.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The relationship has been successful. They have pretty big clients, which gives us additional confidence in them being able to support us. They’re competitively priced as well.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Having many people look after a project has its advantages and disadvantages. We need to always be sure there’s going to always be somebody that can help our customers and respond to their inquiry at any time of the day. There’s sometimes miscommunication in terms of the handover from one person to another on their side. We have seen improvement on their side; they have been training up their staff and introducing new tools and systems to help that.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be as transparent as possible about your needs. Try and be very specific and detailed in communicating the level of support and the number of support requests you need so that they can put in place what you need to support you.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the COO of a software development company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with DevOps Prodigy?

We needed help launching our custom software development and outsourcing platform.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

In 2018, DevOpsProdigy prepared all our environments to guarantee a zero-downtime deployment for our service. After that, they organized regular maintenance and currently checked and installed all required updates.

What is the team composition?

First, we discussed our plans with their business analyst. Since we agreed on the tasks and technologies, we have been communicating all inquiries to an account manager and a technical lead. Also, there is always a service desk manager who addresses any ad-hoc challenges.

How did you come to work with DevOps Prodigy?

We asked for recommendations from our partners and DevOpsProdigy was referred several times. We examined their previous projects, checked their collaboration conditions, and understood they suit perfectly for your project.

How much have you invested with them?    

We’ve invested approximately $20,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in February 2018 and wrapped up in November 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Thanks to the DevOpsProdigy, we now have security measures that match the industry's standards. We are happy to state that all our deployments went smoothly. Plus, the number of issues with our infrastructure decreased significantly, which we consider the sign of the DevopsProdigy determined efforts.

How did DevOps Prodigy perform from a project management standpoint?

They were very professional, pleasant to deal with, productive, and responsive.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They are skilled experts in DevOps and cloud services, and pleasant to deal with. They act proactively and never miss a call for help, even at non-working hours.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I know they are growing, so I wish they expand quickly to have more managers available for all time zones.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Quints is a robust affiliate marketing solution that is capable to adapt to the needs of every client. Modular infrastructure and a dedicated team of professionals will help you build the best possible affiliate program for your product. Managing partner

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire DevOpsProdigy?

DevOps

What were your goals for this project?

Stable high quality environment launched and ability to quickly start our cooperation to solve existing problems

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

I have requested feedback from my business partners and colleagues about the companies who might be able to solve our needs. We have discussed our needs and received propositions from three best companies and selected DevOps Prodigy as a company who can quickly start working with us and has a reasonable price.

Describe the project in detail.

The DevOpsProdigy prepared development and production environment for us and made sure we have a seamless deployment. Nowadays, they carry out regular maintanence and necessary update of our services. The DevOpsProdigy also help us to meet the security requirements.

What was the team composition?

They provide cloud devops / admins service, it means there are a lot (50+) of people in communication channels. we put a request and someone from their side solves the task. We have not used dedicated team for our project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our IT team is happy with environment configured by DevOps Prodigy. And as soon as they don't inform me about problems there - I am happy as well :)

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We have a couple of team chats for communication. We can put a request right on the chat and someone from DevOps Prodigy team creates a task in task-tracking system on their side, where we can check the status. In case of epic tasks we created epic and micro tasks right in task-tracker avoiding chat requests. The process worked fine in both ways.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They produce high-quality work and it's easy to communicate with them.

Are there any areas for improvement?

We communicate through Telegram and I will appreciate slack chats :)

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Media on economics in Russia, Product Owner

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire DevOpsProdigy?

We hired DevOpsProdigy to enhance our news website “The Bell”. It is an English-Russian media platform with multiple video, text and visual content and news mailout.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to strengthen our website’s accessibility.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We have known the DevOpsProdigy for a long time but had not worked with them directly. Though we heard a lot of positive feedbacks from our partners. So, when we faced a challenge of high traffic to our website, we already knew we should contact the DevOpsProdigy team for help.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

DevOpsProdigy took lead on our young venture in WordPress and helped us upgrade it into a big, high traffic website. In a fast track manner, DevOpsProdigy assisted us to migrate from virtual private server to a dedicated server. Now, DevOpsProdigy help us to discontinue using WordPress in favor of the custom solution. DevOpsProdigy are building the CI/CD and horizontally scalable architecture (in Kubernetes) for our development environment. Next will be building the CI/CD for production environment and automatization of new server setting for scale (Ansible).

What was the team composition?

At the very first day of our collaboration with them, the DevOpsProdigy has assigned a designated manager who took into his own hands all work with us. He has a couple of colleagues that sometimes help him to implement the tasks.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

Increase traffic

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Having a designated manager, we were relieved of the burden to contact different managers for different request/ Igor, the manager, has been our first point of contact 24/7. We inform him of our needs and pains, and he finds and implements the best solution.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

No matter how complicated or unusual our request is, the DevOpsProdigy team is always open-minded. They take any problem as an opportunity to experiment and learn new things.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Whenever we have a concern about DevOpsPrody's work, we immediately communicate it to them. They heed to our suggestions and discuss with us the best ways to improve the work processes. And that is the best part. - We have been teaching each other and have grown together into a strong, effective partnership.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO and co-founder of GoWabi, a Thailand-based beauty and wellness app.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with DevOps Prodigy?

We were looking for a service provider to stabilize our infrastructure and provide 24/7 IT support.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

DevOps Prodigy provided a range of services. They scheduled our backups, set up a firewall, and optimized our internal server processes. They utilized software, built on Linux servers, that they’d developed in-house.

They also set up “telegram transport,” where all communication and alerts received by our engineers would be forwarded to them.

What is the team composition?

There are 15-16 people working at different times around the clock. My main point of contact is the project manager, but I can speak to the CTO or any of the engineers if necessary.

How did you come to work with DevOps Prodigy?

They were referred by a friend of mine who used to work in data.

How much have you invested with them?

I’ve spent $20,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in January 2019 and they continue to provide support.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The amount of downtime we experience has been the main metric with which we assess DevOps Prodigy’s performance. We’d initially agreed that, in the event of a server crash, the maximum downtime would be 15 minutes—and they’ve effectively met that standard.

They’ve shown professionalism throughout the engagement. They help us scale our operations during peak-hours, especially in the face of marketing challenges. We’re really happy with them.

How did DevOps Prodigy perform from a project management standpoint?

The entire team has been extremely professional. Their engineers communicate with our clients to solve their issues, and they’ve been very responsive and quick to troubleshoot. Our project manager provides us with monthly updates and follow-ups.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re a reliable partner, and we’ve never experienced any issues.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could improve the English proficiency of some of their teammates.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be direct about your needs.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a company that builds virtual insurance agents. We create chatbots that can sell insurance and provide claim statuses. Our ultimate goal is to replace customer support for the insurance industry with artificial intelligence.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with DevOpsProdigy?

I’m an old-school developer, and back in my day, we didn’t have DevOps as an organizational function. So for a while, I was running my organization without incorporating DevOps into our operations. I soon realized that we could become more efficient by engaging DevOps engineers who could take administrative tasks off the plates of our data scientists.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Working in a very flexible capacity, DevOpsProdigy monitored and managed our deployments. They examined system crashes and handled other administrative tasks, like updates to programming packages or libraries. They worked in adherence to common deployment cycles.

What is the team composition?

The scope of work, as well as the team size, fluctuated between 1–4 depending on the phase of deployment. I interfaced primarily with the CEO and a project manager.

How did you come to work with DevOpsProdigy?

I met their CEO through a mutual friend.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent a little below $25,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together for six months between January 2018 until July of that year.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our uptime was largely extended, thanks to their work. Their job was to ensure that our services were smoothly running all of the time, and they delivered. Since they were available around the clock to troubleshoot, they ensured that we had minimal downtime.

How did DevOpsProdigy perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicated on Slack, where I oversaw all their discussions and work. They were available 24/7.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re just good guys who do good work. If we hadn’t hired someone who, incidentally, had DevOps experience, we would have continued to rely on their services.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, not really. They speak Russian, which I also speak, so it was really easy communicating with them. They spoke English at times, but we’d often switch to Russian to better understand each other. I’m not sure if the language barrier would have posed problems had the circumstances been different.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I simply recommend them. They come at a reasonable rate.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of United Traders. We’re an investment company with a team of about 50 people, most of whom are developers. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with DevOps Prodigy?

We were looking to quickly migrate into the Kubernetes platform but lacked the necessary technical expertise.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

DevOps Prodigy collaborated closely with our internal team to execute the migration. They used Helm, a Kubernetes tool, to create the needed charts. They then installed these templates and launched into script development.

While that project wrapped up, they’re currently assisting with system development that isn’t specific to our business.

What is the team composition?

A primary point of contact spearheaded the project. The team size fluctuates depending on the task, but there have been about six people in total.

How did you come to work with DevOps Prodigy?

After several failed engagements with other companies, an acquaintance introduced me to DevOps Prodigy’s CEO. We discussed my company’s challenges before coming to an agreement.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent roughly $144,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in February 2018, and we have an ongoing relationship.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

DevOps Prodigy successfully integrated Kubernetes into our structure, and it’s been working very well. Their team has provided quality services in a timely manner. When necessary, they propose improvements and enhancements to minimize problems down the road.

How did DevOps Prodigy perform from a project management standpoint?

The project manager has done an effective job of selecting the right developers for different tasks. They have access to our internal project management tools, like our task tracker and coding repositories. They’ve done a good job of working alongside our internal team.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re great at listening to their client in order to effectively resolve their challenges. They’re flexible, and unlike other companies we’ve worked with, they offer custom solutions that are unique to the client’s needs.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I’ve been completely pleased with our engagement.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

When contracting any service provider, start with a small, measurable project. If it goes well, move on to tackle bigger projects.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CEO at AnyChart, a JavaScript library for cross-platform data visualization in the form of interactive charts and dashboards.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire DevOpsProdigy?

We hired them to develop a build pipeline for us.

What were your goals for this project?

We have a huge amount of different building steps, several tools, and a lot of code as it is. So building even dev build is usually tricky. DevOpsProdigy integrated full featured semi-automatic build pipeline, including fast build pipeline for dev releases and a bigger one for release.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We've known DevOpsProdigy for a long time and witnessed their successful projects for other companies. So when the need arose, I reached out to Evgeny, the DevOpsProdigy CEO, and explained him the situation. After detailed discussion with his team, we received a step-by-step working plan and instructions.

Describe the project in detail.

They installed Jenkins, set up a Kubernetes cluster for actual building nodes, and configured artifact storage. As a result, we always have current releases and all older builds at hand.

What was the team composition?

Our managers have been communicating with DevOpsProdigy an account manager, a technical lead, together with a couple of a service managere who adresses any ad-hoc inquiries.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Thanks to DevOpsProdigy, we can now develop in shorter time with fewer bugs, and deliver new released versions in a minute!

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

All communication went smoothly and with no delay.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their employees are technically proficient and approach any task with creativeness and from a long-term perspective.

Are there any areas for improvement?

It's been a successful partnership.