IT Svit

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of MICE Portal, a B2B marketplace for events.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with IT Svit?

We had a longstanding project plan to migrate our hosting infrastructure. After the engineer on our staff with the requisite expertise left our company, we needed to outsource the project.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The project is structured in two phases. Phase one, which involves moving our existing infrastructure over to the new hosting platform, is nearly complete. The hosting aspect is for both our production and staging systems.

As part of the staging system, IT Svit built new capabilities for testing features that we didn’t have in our previous setup. Phase two will be spent implementing a monitoring system tailored to fit within the hosting platform.

What is the team composition? 

One full-time engineer from IT Svit does most of the work for our project. We work with two other people, including the CTO who does most of the conceptual, strategic planning. He provides high-level guidance to the engineers who perform individual tasks.

How did you come to work with IT Svit?

We spoke to three different providers. After we explained the project, we had each of them come back to us with an estimate and a project proposal. We chose IT Svit because their company was more of a structured organization than the other freelancers and agencies we considered. They had the expertise we were looking for as well as ability to provide us with replacements if necessary.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $15,000-$20,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2019, and the project is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The work IT Svit provides for us is very much behind the scenes. Since their deliverable is not yet in use, it’s hard to give concrete results. Once complete, we anticipate that having a platform to roll out changes will improve our developers’ productivity and reduce their workload. The platform will also improve our system’s testability and offer better observability for software in production. 

Historically, we’ve been unable to test various aspects of our software outside of production. With the migration, part of the goal was to extend the area within our system that we can actually test before we roll out changes. 

Lastly, IT Svit is helping us consolidate our hosting infrastructure. Replacing the two hosting providers we use with a single one will reduce expenses for our company. After compensating IT Svit, we’re looking at a payback period of about 18 months for the ROI. Their work will continue to save us money in the future.

How did IT Svit perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management has been average. We use the agile methodology.  Every week, we set up two calls to go through specific planning. Our teams are in constant contact throughout the project. We share a Slack channel to communicate. 

I felt like we had different understandings on both sides about how quickly we needed to proceed to get to the end result. We’re about a month behind where we would have expected to be. However, we gave them additional requirements after our initial discussions which expanded the scope. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The CTO is very knowledgeable. He was quick to pick up the specifics of our platform and what we wanted to achieve. They transformed the instructions we gave them into an actionable plan for the engineers to implement.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could have a more detailed estimation process for the scoping of the project. I would like to know more clearly how long the project will take.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I recommend getting the CTO involved in your project. If you have more complicated requirements, spend some extra time on making them clear.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of a cryptocurrency company whose primary clientele are brokerages. We’re currently building a bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchange service. We also support additional wallets for mobile devices and offer a blockchain explorer service.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with IT Svit?

We wanted help with our cryptocurrency development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We built everything using Amazon Web Services (AWS), primarily through communities, but we also used Terraform to deploy our main resources on AWS. They host our core infrastructure and we have continuous integration and deployment linked into different repositories that we use to build the app. The whole process has been challenging, but they converted our specs into a first iteration, which we’re using for product development. At this point, we’re almost ready to release the final product.

One critical feature of the app is its ability to monitor the system to prevent hacking. We use a lot of technologies that conform to the syscalls issued by the application. We also have a lot of network segregation between different parts of the app to ensure that wallets are not accessing it directly—they have to pass through a proxy before authentication.

What is the team composition?

Their CEO is our main point of contact.

How did you come to work with IT Svit?

Our company is small and needed to scale up in order to undertake this project. I didn’t want to hire developers in-country because it’s too expensive, so I interviewed a number of agencies and freelancers. IT Svit asked the best questions and provided good feedback and documentation. They also offered a price that I could afford.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $27,000 USD.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in March 2018 and the work is ongoing. It began as part-time and went full-time in July 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

It would’ve been difficult to develop this product ourselves since it’s so complicated. They have the technical expertise to quickly understand what we need and they provide good options when I don’t give them specific instruction on where to go next.

How did IT Svit perform from a project management standpoint?

Their CEO works nearly full-time on this project with us, and we touch base every day via Slack or GitHub. We also have conference calls once a month so I can share feedback from our side of the process. Their whole operation runs very efficiently and we haven’t had any issues.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their technical skills are amazing. They’re responsive when we have any issues, even if it’s in the evening, which isn’t something I expected from freelancers. On top of that, their communication is always prompt.

Are there any areas they could improve?

None that I can think of.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have a clear objective before starting the project and provide clear expectations. They’ll be able to offer better insights into the project that way.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the co-founder of an app development company. We develop e-commerce software and build SaaS products.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with IT Svit?

We hired IT Svit to provide development services.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They worked on several projects including a blockchain loyalty solution for the Shopify market. We provided specifications and initial designs. Both teams met to discuss the application architecture and design implementation. More recently, they helped with applications that we connected to a Shopify store’s marketing side.

What is the team composition?

We worked with 6–7 people.

How did you come to work with IT Svit?

We found them via Upwork.

How much have you invested in them?

We have invested between $10,000–$50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in October 2017 and the project ended in June 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

IT Svit delivered a fully-functional solution. They executed the project according to our specifications and produced quality code. We used external QA testing and that team didn’t find any significant issues.

How did IT Svit perform from a project management standpoint?

The team was transparent. I led the project from all side and never encountered any issues. My team spoke with them daily. I interacted with IT Svit 1–2 times per week.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were responsive and addressed any questions we had.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could’ve been more organized during development and QA. The team did not cover all the processes we required.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

IT Svit provided quality results at a reasonable price. We are still working with them because we’re satisfied with their services. The team is well-suited for small or mid-sized projects; I’m not sure about larger projects.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m software engineering manager for PEC Safety.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with IT Svit?

We hired IT Svit to provide engineering services on a short-term contract.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We held initial planning meetings to discuss our expectations for the engagement. During this stage, IT Svit made several recommendations. Currently, the team does custom software development with ELK Stack, Elasticsearch, Kibana, and Logstash in AWS. They also use Rancher Orchestration and Docker Orchestration.

What is the team composition?

We work with about three resources including the product manager, a lead developer, and 1–2 other developers.

How did you come to work with IT Svit?

We found them on Upwork.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $5,000–$10,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in June 2018 and the partnership is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Up until two months ago, IT Svit worked under constrained conditions because we had security implications with our AWS infrastructure. Those concerns limited their capacity to work, and we appreciated their persistence during those challenges. Now, IT Svit has a greater capacity to deliver; they've picked up the pace on their deliverables. They’re doing a great job on that end.

How did IT Svit perform from a project management standpoint?

Overall, I’m happy their allocation of resources. Each week, we have at least three 30-minute video calls and several sync meetings; the latter is with the lead developer. The product manager stays in touch and keeps the project on track.

What did you find most impressive about them?

IT Svit provides more resources and greater attention to detail than other vendors we’ve contracted. Likewise, the team iterates quickly.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, we’re happy with the engagement.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Although clients should evaluate several different options, IT Svit’s ELK Stack expertise distinguished the team from other prospective vendors. I did preliminary research for the interviews; the team clearly knew what they were talking about.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and founder of ProteiQ Biosciences GmbH. We process large amounts of proteomics data.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with IT Svit?

We wanted to create a scalable cloud solution for big data processing and offer that as a service to third parties. We hired IT Svit to architect a scalable infrastructure on Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We met with IT Svit to discuss our ideas behind the project. The team looked at our software and ran it on their computer to experience the processing pipeline. A month later, we developed a roadmap. Since IT Svit thought the software was too complicated, they proposed to create a cloud-based prototype using Jenkins Pipeline.

What is the team dynamic?

We worked with a team lead and 2–3 developers. Different managers onboarded throughout the engagement.

How did you come to work with IT Svit?

I posted a job listing on Upwork that targeted agencies with GCP experience. I then interviewed the technical leads from each company we considered. We chose IT Svit based on the team’s experience and their performance in the interview.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent approximately $33,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them from March–September 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

How did your relationship with IT Svit evolve?

The implementation started in April 2018. But I later noticed that the team had been adding new features we didn’t need. I sat down with them again in May to define the features we needed for a working and scalable solution. At the end of June, I asked them to just build what we defined without adding anything new.

IT Svit completed the first prototyping milestone in about a month and a half on Jenkins. We tested it and moved to implementation on GCP based on IT Svit's suggested architecture. We then did the first test in August of the GCP implementation. Unfortunately, IT Svit’s deliverables did not match our expectations. The solution crashed when we attempted to process more than one file in a project. When we aired our frustration, the team stated that we had never communicated the target picture to them, which prevented their ability to scale the solution. The team then gave us two options—stop the project or pay a fee to remedy the problem.

That interaction led me to arrange a discussion between the technical lead and CEO. That exchange did not yield immediate results. As a workaround, our team bought a different server for our laboratory and migrated our workflow on to that. I then assigned our in-house team to complete the GCP project.

The in-house team could remedy coding mistakes and make the solution work on a few files, however, the architecture proposed was not suitable for our task. We discussed the solution with Google Cloud engineers who confirmed that it could never work. We are now rebuilding everything from scratch with a different vendor.

What problems arose and what did IT Svit do to address them?

The internal team reviewed IT Svit’s work and determined that a misunderstanding occurred around GCP. They identified several basic mistakes that hindered the infrastructure’s scalability.

IT Svit spent too much time on prototyping, but they completely lacked an understanding of GCP. Ultimately, even the prototype on Jenkins proved to be unhelpful.

Describe the impact this engagement has had on your business.

The Jenkins Pipeline implementation took 600 hours when the team’s initial estimate was 60 hours. Furthermore, transferring to GCP and prototyping was a disaster, likely as a result of from IT Svit’s unfamiliarity with GCP. Although this engagement hasn’t hindered our relationship with customers, it did keep us from performing faster. But our significant amount of internal activity made it difficult to pinpoint IT Svit’s overall impact.

How was project management handled?

Our project scope was clear and stable, but IT Svit didn’t create value for the cost. Their daily updates stopped abruptly. Similarly, the team had to redo documentation on three occasions. Our team interacted with account managers as needed. We also communicated via email and biweekly calls with the technical team.

Is there anything that the vendor did well or that you would consider a strength?

The team had strong sales, marketing, and communication skills. Although IT Svit needed extra time, they did a good job with the Jenkins Pipeline implementation. That component was basic system administration work, but they executed it well.

In what specific areas can they improve?

IT Svit needed to be more transparent about their GCP competency and abilities to handle complex projects.

What advice do you have for clients with similar needs to yours?

Give them clear instructions in writing and monitor their work closely.

Company Responses

“I’m a big fan of people who speak negatively about me in public, and I’m most afraid of those who do it in secret”—Jay Baer.

We received 16 reviews during 2 years of our presence at Clutch.co. 
It’s the first ever review where the client hasn’t given us 5-stars, however, it may be the most valuable. 

So let’s describe the situation:

* The client had a complete control over the extended team and decided how to organize the resources while planning ahead by regular calls.
* Every 2 weeks, we survey all clients in our internal feedback system. Artyom always rated us with top grades.
* Artyom suddenly terminated the assignment and began to demand things that were not included in the initial scope of work.
* After that, he stopped the contract, violating the agreement and not paying the bill.

In our opinion, only one point in this feedback reflects the essence of all claims:
“What advice do you have for clients with similar needs to yours?
Give them clear instructions in writing and monitor their work closely.”

The client acted as the project manager and project lead. Being a distributed team, we weren't informed about his business goals and could not meet his expectations becuase of that.

We wish ProteiQ Biosciences to become a successful, unique company with a valuable mission. And IT Svit is always ready to help and achieve the clear and defined results.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the founder and CEO of a staking company. We provide staking services in cryptocurrencies on behalf of institutional investors. Essentially, we provide an interest rate for the investors we serve.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with IT Svit?

We wanted to build a system in Kubernetes that had a high degree of automation and flexibility.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We outlined the architecture we wanted to build and they helped us think through implementation strategies. They quickly built an MVP solution and made a series of recommendations regarding software and strategies to accomplish our goals.

We use Kubernetes, Prometheus, the AWS stack, and several other tools. With a broad range of capabilities, they’ve also written shell scripts and Python scripts for us. The finished product isn’t quite a web application, but more of a behind-the-scenes technology service.

What is the team composition?

We have an account manager, an architecture lead, and a developer.

How did you come to work with IT Svit?

We found them on Upwork. We interviewed a number of consultants who were familiar with Kubernetes and other orchestration systems. They stood out for their level of competence and a skillset that matched our needs.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in May 2018. The project is ongoing and I anticipate a continued relationship.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We developed a system that generates revenue. We went from nothing to a fully functional, highly available production and staging environment that uses a lot of different technologies. It currently supports four different cryptocurrency chains and we hope to move up to ten by the end of the year. We’ve had a smooth process, in spite of a fast timeline.

How did IT Svit perform from a project management standpoint?

They work very well. They stay on top of our backlog and understand how to react to changing priorities. We use GitHub to keep track of key tasks and have a daily standup each morning on Slack. They start work ahead of us, so we actively communicate throughout the first part of our day and the end of theirs.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have a unique skillset and deliver quality products very quickly.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything they should improve or do differently.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Anyone looking for a good partner should hire them.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the CTO of Codeta, an online live casino operator.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire IT Svit?

We wanted to develop a leading live casino experience.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We had a list of demands and questions for vendors and contacted seven different outsourcing companies in Ukraine. IT Svit lived up to our requirements regarding availability, time to deliver, and company size, among other criteria.

Can you go into detail about the services they provided and the scope of the project?

IT Svit provided developers for our React/Firebase project, focusing mainly on the frontend portion of the application. They built features for gathering player data and calculating their Skill Score, as well as a function that retrieved information from external sources, storage, calculations, and more. They also suggested and implemented improvements to the system. The project expanded and cloud-based SQL was added along with Google BigQuery.

What was the team composition?

The project team consisted of two developers for the first stage and a third developer added at a later stage.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Skill Score is a prominent feature in the casino industry, and its implementation resulted in a rise in new users as well as returning reactivated users.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The project was, in agreement with It Svit, mainly handled by ourselves. However, their team would give us preventive advice when necessary to avoid potential issues.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

IT Svit handled changing circumstances well. They're also very attentive to their clients.

Are there any areas where they can improve?

Their service was flawless. I have no complaints in terms of the way they handled the scope of the project.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO of Hatch, a dating app based in Japan.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire IT Svit?

We needed someone to build and maintain our app’s backend. We don’t have any in-house engineers, so we were looking to outsource.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goals were to build the backend quickly and efficiently while also soliciting feedback on both how to scale properly and on what dev-ops changes could be made.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

After interviewing and running tests with a few teams and people, IT Svit seemed like the best fit for us.

Describe the project in detail.

Once we selected them, we had a meeting via Skype to talk about the project. After that, their backend engineer spent a month working with the previous project engineers to learn how the infrastructure worked.

What was the team composition?

We primarily worked with one project manager and one backend engineer and occasionally received dev-ops support.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

From the beginning, IT Svit was comfortable with the position of being a remote-CTO for our projects. They’re also comprised of many talented workers, so that when we need specialized expertise (like dev-ops for Amazon web services), they had people readily available.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

After the previous project engineers left, the transition to IT Svit’s engineer was seamless. Considering we have a language and cultural barrier and only talk via Slack, we communicate exceptionally well. The engineer and project manager both write in detail.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I honestly don't have any complaints about them, and that's what's most impressive. Working with them is smooth, and as a CEO, that's the best outcome.

Are there any areas for improvement?

The engineers respond quickly, but the project manager could respond more quickly. Overall, it's really a non-issue.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the IT Manager for an event services company that serves individuals and B2B.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with IT Svit?

We required assistance from people who were qualified and skilled in infrastructure, support, and management to help us bridge the gap from our old system to our new platform.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We were developing a single page web application, and though they weren't involved in product development, IT Svit provided support throughout our launch process. In addition to monitoring use to find faults and providing backend support, they also created the infrastructure that allowed us to have our product perform as efficiently as it did. They set up servers primarily with AWS, but Docker as well.

What is the team composition?

I usually worked with one developer, but team members would occasionally contribute when additional help was needed.

How did you come to work with IT Svit?

I found them through Upwork, where I laid out our budget and project requirements. They had the skillset we needed and were able to work within our price range.

How much have you invested with them?

We've spent just under $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We've been working with them since November 2017.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We were struggling with site stability and with maintaining security. IT Svit’s work to implement best practices and tools has given us the site stability we now have.

How did IT Svit perform from a project management standpoint?

I have no complaints—we communicate daily and their overall project management is excellent.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I really appreciated their willingness, attentiveness, and the availability they made for us.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of a company that’s developing a cryptocurrency exchange. We allow customers to buy and sell cryptocurrency using the local fiat currency.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with IT Svit?

We needed qualified resources to design and develop our web platform.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

In the beginning, we contacted them to set up the site’s initial infrastructure since they had a DevOps team. Once they finished the project, we asked them to help us develop the site. They’ve been working with us since, and we’re preparing to launch the product by the end of this month.

Our platform allows users to make fiat deposits into their virtual wallets to buy different cryptocurrencies. Certain users can also deposit money using a local bank card gateway called Knet. If the investment makes money, the user can sell the cryptocurrency at the current market price. Any money gained will be deposited back into the user’s virtual wallets. They can then transfer that money into their personal bank accounts.

What is the team composition?

During the onboarding process, we gave them a description of what we needed from the team along with each person’s responsibilities. From this, they assigned four dedicated team members. We've also periodically hired a fixed-project resource for infrastructure work, though that person comes and goes depending on our needs.

How did you come to work with IT Svit?

We originally found them on Upwork after posting a job for DevOps and infrastructure work. They sent us a message, and we talked to them to see what kind of skills they had. Since the initial project, we've used them for other development services.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $10,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

Their work began in March 2018 and is ongoing. We expect to complete the site in June 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

IT Svit is a talented team, and they consistently provide high-quality work. At times, they’ve even exceeded our expectations. Beyond their strong coding skills, I want to highlight their English proficiency. Because we can’t speak Russian nor Ukrainian, we need a common language to communicate smoothly. We appreciate that all of their developers speak decent English.

How did IT Svit perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve performed well so far. We typically communicate on a daily basis. However, we’ve had some issues communicating during the past six weeks. They had some ideas that they couldn’t quite put into words, and when they did, we needed extra clarification. After they explained further, we would give them our feedback for discussion. This was a lengthy process, and we were approaching a tight deadline. As a result, I decided to fly out to them to ease communication. I’ve been here for almost three weeks, and the progress is going much faster. We don’t have to take as many steps to get our message across, which helps save time.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Aside from their excellent communication, I appreciate their professionalism and punctuality. We also have access to their vast pool of knowledge and resources. I’ve enjoyed working with every individual on their team, from the programmers to the account manager. Their administration even facilitated my trip here. They go the extra mile to ensure that we’re happy with our deliverables.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Although IT Svit’s team has a decent level of English, it could be more beneficial to hire people who are fluent. We can easily converse with them, now, but better language skills will always mean better communication.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Don’t bother going to another vendor because IT Svit is highly capable. Their team is full of talented people who’ve worked with various types of projects. As such, they’re able to offer suggestions on how to improve the project while also avoiding unnecessary obstacles. If a client has a project, chances are that IT Svit has already worked on something similar.