Nisos Technologies

BACKGROUND

We are a certified organic kitchen and grocery, located in Roslyn and Greenvale Long Island, New York. I'm the CEO [Chief Executive Officer].

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

The challenge we faced was creating an app and website. The app incorporates an innovation in the grocery industry which eliminated the need for physical shopping carts. The app and website needed to reflect inventory in real-time and allow customers to easily shop in both the kitchen and grocery locations.

SOLUTION

Nisos Technologies developed our app and website on time and within budget.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Nisos Technologies was knowledgeable and very quick to respond. Their team offered many hours of free consultation to help develop the strategy. Their value went way beyond the job. Their CEO, Ronnie Guha, is a professional and always makes himself available for advice and feedback. Their work lived up to expectations and often they were able to improvise solutions to things without getting bogged down with every single detail. They have a good method of keeping a project moving forward.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

SandCrate is a startup that developed a social networking site where entrepreneurs can connect and build teams.

What is your position?

I'm a co-founder and the Chief Operating Officer.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Nisos?

We had built a MVP using an off-the-shelf software named BuddyPress. We quickly ran into the limitations of the system, and reached out to Nisos as a partner that could understand our business needs in developing a professional, top-of-the-line system.

We'd worked with multiple developers up to that point, maybe four or five. Some were better than others, but none really met our needs until we found Nisos.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

They developed a web platform with full mobile responsiveness for a complete social network. It was structured so that we could build mobile apps in the future, but we concentrated on a responsive mobile layout in the beginning.

How did you come to work with Nisos?

We are self-funded and don't have a large budget. We found many individual developers who were interested on working on the project, but they either weren't able to understand the business requirements that we wanted to fulfill, or misrepresented themselves in terms of what they could actually accomplish.

We met Ronnie and talked to him, getting his feedback on the business case and letting him know what our plans were. Since he is also an entrepreneur and a business owner, he understood us. He understood the technical parts, as well as the business requirements, and how to interpret our requests properly, so as not to do a lot of work in the wrong direction. That kind of understanding and good communication, combined with fair pricing, thorough expertise in a wide range of different applications, and willingness to use the best technology for what we wanted to accomplish, rather than what they were comfortable with, have led us to choose them.

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

The price for the first phase is between $10,000-50,000. The total project cost is between $100,000-200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started the project in July of 2015.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

The quality of their work is very good. We've been working on several mini releases. The final release is taking place now [Dec., 2015], and should be rolled out into production after minor tweaks. This will take approximately two weeks. Everything that we've seen so far looks great. It's a top quality, intuitive, professional site, using current design aesthetics with smooth functionality. I'm overall pleased and have no negative comments.

What distinguishes Nisos from other providers?

The approach that they took was very customer-focused. We received frequent updates, and they set up the development to be an open process in terms of their internal discussions and how they figured out the implementation of various aspects. They didn't simply disappear for a month, and come back with a result. It was a constant iterative process. It was very open, which gave us confidence that they were heading in the right direction. We also had the confidence to change or expand the scope when we identified an area of concern.

Is there anything Nisos could have improved or done differently?

From my stance, everything has been positive. There will always be areas of improvement for anyone, but from my experience with other developers that have worked on this project, I can't point to anything specific.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

My company is a startup accounting firm. We are creating software in order to extract information for preparing people's tax returns faster. That is what Ronnie [Guha, Founder of Nisos] has been helping us with.

What is your position?

I'm a co-founder of the startup.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Nisos Technologies?

We didn’t have any developers on our team for the iOS app that we're looking to make.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

They were responsible for developing our mobile applications, which is basically a general information survey. Based on those questions, people are prompted to which forms they need to provide our firm. Nisos also created a web application where we could view our clients' information in a really clean format. The application was for iOS.

How did you come to work with Nisos Technologies?

We got in touch with Ronnie over Elance [now Upwork]. I spoke to him on the phone, and he seemed really confident that they could do everything we were asking for. They weren't necessarily the cheapest option, but he told me they had worked with past clients who had struggled with other developers, which was our situation, and that a lot of times they're the solution, because they can get things done fast and on time. All of that ended up being true.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Nisos in September of this year. We are wrapping up our project right now, but we already have future work lined up with Nisos.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Nisos does really high-quality work. Any time we have a problem, they will fix it really quickly. They have been able to understand all our questions, and they implemented the design we gave them really successfully.

What distinguishes Nisos Technologies from other providers?

They stay on schedule better than anyone I've worked with in the past. That had been the main problem we were facing with our freelance developers over the last few years. It’s been hard to meet deadlines with other companies, but Nisos has met every deadline.

Is there anything Nisos Technologies could have improved or done differently?

No. I guess everybody can improve, but they did such a good job that I can’t single anything out.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

The company that Nisos was helping me build out is called vFit Shoes and its part of vFit Technologies. vFit allows consumers to capture multiple images of their feet using an iPhone app, and convert those images into a digital three-dimensional mold of their feet. By uploading that to the cloud, the consumer can virtually try on branded footwear/shoes to determine how those shoes would fit their feet specifically, and make a recommendation as far as what size they would need to purchase when buying shoes online.

What is your position?

I am the founder and Chief Executive Officer [CEO].

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Nisos?

The challenge I faced was basically taking the technology I was already using in store kiosks, and then converting that to a newer cloud-based platform and updating the technology from 2004 to today.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

Parts of it were already built. What Ronnie [Guha, Founder of Nisos] and his team members did at the time was fix a lot of the issues that we were facing with the iPhone app. They also built a cloud-based database for those images to be uploaded, which starts the whole process. The biggest part of their work was that they started building an online comparative shopping site called vFit Shop, using the feeds that we were getting from Zappos, to propagate that online marketplace. So to summarize, Nisos was web developing and fixing the app. They basically re-architected the entire database to work on Amazon Web Services.

How did you come to work with Nisos?

Initially, I worked with several other teams and was running into a lot of dead ends; I was not getting the level of service or the quality of service that I had hoped for. Then, I found Nisos through a job site. Ronnie responded to a job inquiry that I had. After several conversations and discussions, and some initial work, I hired them to take over the entire job.

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

The scope of what I had spent was over $10,000. Unfortunately, the Nisos group couldn't finish what we had laid out for them to build because of my inability to raise additional capital to get us to the next level. So we're stuck between a rock and a hard place right now, while I'm out trying to raise capital.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working sometime between late 2011 and early 2012. We haven't done any work for over a year now, due to the funding issue.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

I was very impressed with the level of work I got from them. Nisos had the ability to assess my needs, take an old broken-down database and reverse engineer it in order to get it up and running, and modernize it. We were working under a really tight budget and some tight timelines to be able to come up with a minimum viable product, to be able to show investors and see where it can go. They did a terrific job doing that.

What distinguishes Nisos from other providers?

When I was looking for off-shore development that could work under a tight budget, I valued Ronnie's ability to communicate and project-manage everything. He was a great bridge into managing that whole process.

Is there anything Nisos could have improved or done differently?

I think at the time, they were lacking iOS app developers. My understanding today, and it's been a little over a year ago, Ronnie's communicated back and they've ramped up to where they’re a lot better than they were back then. I've also asked several people that have done app development and they say the same.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We're a wine cellar company. We manufacture wine cabinets and resell wine accessories.

What is your position?

I'm the CEO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Nisos Technologies?

We're redoing our website and adding a moral component. Even though we're a manufacturer, we're trying to do things more environmentally friendly and have a moral compass and focus on giving back. We had a section on our website where we were doing that. Along those lines, we were creating an app that linked in with that kind of concept. It's far away from what we make and do. But, Nisos was able to make that component.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

It was developing an iOS/Android mobile application. It's on the Apple Store right now. They were responsible for the entire development, from design all the way through to UI/UX [user interface/user experience]. 

How did you come to work with Nisos Technologies?

We went through a bidding process. I'm not sure how we found them. I don't know if it was through our website provider or separately. I ended up working with them on a personal level. We were discussing the launch of the app and had them market it. They were very helpful with that process. Nisos Technologies has been very helpful and responsive, and they know what they are doing. I would use them again, and I would refer them. 

What is the status of this engagement?

The app is complete. They finished it in about four to five weeks. If there was a delay, it was on our end. They were very fast. Anytime we emailed, Nisos responded right away.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

It seems like the app is working fine. I have no complaints about their work. Now, it's just a matter of marketing it. It's out of their hands at this point. 

Is there anything Nisos Technologies could have improved or done differently?

Maybe they could do the marketing too. I haven't thought of that, but maybe I could ask them about that. We're trying to figure it out ourselves right now.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

GigaSpaces does web design and sells two products. The first product is an in-memory compute product. It's called XAP. It's a technology that sits between the application and the database in many cases and it's designed for real-time big data scenarios. It is being implemented within almost every industry, whether it's financial services, travel, homeland security, health care, or ecommerce. Our customers include Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Kohl's, QVC, United Healthcare, and many other Fortune 500 companies. The second product, around four years old, is called Cloudify. It deals with application orchestration and it draws inspiration from the cloud environment. It's all about onboarding applications on the private-hybrid cloud. XAP is all about dealing with applications' scalability around data access and data processing bottlenecks while Cloudify is about application management.

What is your position?

I'm the Deputy CTO at GigaSpaces. I oversee the entire technical activity of the teams in the United States: pre-sale, post-sale, and everything in between.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Nisos Technologies?

We are in many cases in the forefront of new, cutting-edge technology, and many times, there is some sort of education process to be done. Sometimes, there's an integration process to be done with legacy systems and on both aspects the Nisos guys have been very helpful.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

On the integration front, many times the technology that we're producing and sending needs integration with back-end legacy resources, for example, mainframe Oracle databases, and so on. One aspect of our work with Nisos that was very successful was having these legacy or back-end delivery systems interacting with our technology. This is called the delta server project, and it's available on our website as part of our solutions and best practices package. This entire offering is being implemented by the Nisos team.

Beyond the technical implementation, we're also leveraging the Nisos team for thought leadership, and pushing the idea for our community and for our blogging site. That's another educational activity that we're doing with Nisos. They're very successful at it. They're very professional and very detailed. Their work shows a depth of understanding, not only of the technology but also of the market. It's unique to see people that actually can leverage both of these to educate a community and customers, and bring these two elements together. It's not easy, but they do it very well.

How did you come to work with Nisos Technologies?

We usually worked with a small boutique shop that had special skills to address this cutting-edge innovation that we're offering out there. We have learned from our experience that they have a very talented COO, Ronnie Guha. I've learned in the last few years that he is excellent, not only from the technical side but also from the business side. Ronnie is the gateway to the Nisos team. We generally present them with the technical challenge, and we produce a scoping document together. There's no long process of adaptation or a back and forth process to get the scoping document and deliver. 

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

I'm not sure it makes sense for me to expose those details. We're usually working with a small boutique shop, which has very special skills, and it doesn't come cheap. But, the value that we're getting is so high, that we're willing to pay those prices. If you want the best, you have to pay for it.

What is the status of this engagement?

We had our first engagement one and a half to two years ago. Every now and then, we have a new project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you give any feedback from this engagement?

If I were to give them a letter grade, I would say A+. They have definitely delivered.

What distinguishes Nisos Technologies from other providers?

Nisos Technologies's ability to understand the market really sets them apart. This is cutting-edge technology with so many moving targets. They have quite a bit of history with this market, especially in memory compute, virtualization, cloud, and special geo-location based technology. From what we've seen, they deliver very well, and we're planning to use them for many other projects in the future.

Is there anything Nisos Technologies could have improved or done differently?

We know that when we're asking someone to expand their skill set, it means that it might impact their existing business. We always want to work with a best-of-breed company. We like to pick and choose who we work with because we know we've got this skill set, and we're not asking them to go beyond their specific skills. The only thing I might suggest is that they develop a better understanding of the new virtualization or open stacks technology that's out there. This could even allow them to generate more business.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

My company is Aerodynamic Email. It's a startup. I'm building an email marketing system that's designed to be white labeled by other marketing companies.

What is your position?

I'm the CEO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Nisos Technologies?

As a startup, we didn't have any software. I needed someone to build the software. I wanted to outsource the development work. There are a couple of things that really drew me to working with Nisos and with Ronnie [Guha, founder of Nisos Technologies] in particular. Part of it was that I had a vision for the software that was relatively confined and limited in terms of what I wanted to do. They were able to come in and make suggestions. For example, without much more work, we could make this system significantly more flexible and significantly more scalable and, ultimately, that would result in something much better that I could take to market.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

They were responsible for end-to-end development of all the software. We are currently close to launch.

How did you come to work with Nisos Technologies?

I looked at about 10 companies. Four of them were local in the Denver area. I went in and sat down with them. Six of them were ones that I met online through Elance or other contacts. The process involved describing the software that I wanted to develop, describing where I wanted to take the company, and seeing what people would come back with and how they could add to my vision. A couple of companies came back with no more than what I was asking for, at absolutely ludicrous prices. The local ones were actually the worst. A number of them would not even come back with prices, or even a ballpark, without me spending another $15,000 to $30,000 for them to come in and begin to develop a general scope. Then, a couple of them came in and gave me a ballpark range, explained how they wanted to work, came with additional ideas and how they would approach the technology. Ronnie came in and blew it away. He hit all the points that I was looking at trying to solve, and then came at it from multiple other angles as well. It also helped that he came back with a general ballpark range that was within my budget.

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

The total cost of the work was in the $75,000 to $125,000 range.

What is the status of this engagement?

It's been a dynamic process where I knew that we wouldn't have everything solved when we started. We started working at the beginning of March [2015] and we are two or three weeks away from being done with the work [September 2015]. I won't be able to send potential customers to it for another month after that because we're going to keep it hidden for a while. I actually have another company that's going to be the first white-labeled partner, and that's what's going to go live first. It's a marketing company in the mortgage and real estate industry. That one's going to go live and work out the bugs before we start pushing the platform out for other partners.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

How did Nisos Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

It's been fantastic. When I launched this project, it involved stepping back into doing another software project after I had one that completely failed about five years ago. The developer that I worked with built something that absolutely didn't work. In comparison, this has been a night-and-day experience. For each piece as we've moved through the project, the communication has been fantastic. We've gone back and forth on how to address a particular issue within the system or how the user interface is going to work. We go back and forth until everyone's satisfied. It's been really a very positive experience in terms of communication with the client. In terms of the project that's coming out it's fantastic. It is significantly more than I expected when I began this. It's going to allow me to go after my initial market and also go after other vertical markets that I really hadn't anticipated being able to go after. But, I'll be able to go after them natively with the way the system is built right now.

What distinguishes Nisos Technologies from other providers?

Nisos Technologies were willing to sit down and have that in-depth discussion before the work began. One other thing that was unique was that they used a very consultative approach. I didn't feel like I was being sold a bunch of guys to program exactly what I wanted. I felt more like I was working with somebody that understood there were business issues involved and that we were going to use software to solve those issues together. That was a huge differentiator. 

Is there anything Nisos Technologies could have improved or done differently?

I don't have a comparison in this price range to say. Right now, I'd say no. The only thing that I could see that would've made my life a little bit easier is having a better testing methodology as we're heading toward the end. But, this is a custom project, and the methodology has to be built with it. It's not something that they would already have in place from doing other types of projects. That's the only place where we've had some hiccups. But, any place where we've had these hiccups, I've had Ronnie to deal with any issues. It's been great.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are an early phase startup company. We have built a platform that optimizes corporate social responsibilities. It's a platform that allows NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] to provide real-time updates to corporations that have donated to specific projects. Through our platform, NGOs can update donors in the form of hard data feeds and multimedia feeds.

What is your position?

I'm the founder and CEO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Nisos Technologies?

I don't have a tech background. The one person I had on board who was acting chief operating officer didn't have a tech background, either. He had more of an NGO background. Since we didn't have a chief technology officer, we found Nisos Technology and their founder, Ronnie Guha, acted like a lead developer. We spoke to him and he helped us take a lot of the business side and implement it technologically, and to understand what it would mean to build a platform of this capacity. He helped us make that transition. He led that discussion and then implemented it with his team.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

They were responsible for one-hundred percent of the web development – front end, back-end – everything.  Initially, we started out with the idea of a mobile app. We ended up moving away from that idea. It was a business decision more than a tech decision. However, that's something we still have on the table. We got halfway through scoping it out before we decided to put a hold on it. The web platform is responsive as well. 

How did you come to work with Nisos Technologies?

This is my first startup so going about finding the right developers and the right team was a new experience for me. We had other developers we were working with probably three or four months before we came across Nisos. They were fine but there was a clear miscommunication between what I wanted built and what they actually ended up building.  It was a lot of saying yes and then building something that really didn't have the functionality that we wanted. I came across Ronnie on Elance. It was my first time using Elance. I had a few conversations with him. I think, from my end, it took me a few weeks and repeated phone calls and meetings to be comfortable, given the fact that I had a bad experience with my previous developers. 

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

The project was in the $50,000 to $200,000 range.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started in December 2014. The initial scope of work has been completed. There's ongoing work, so they're doing a bunch of stuff for us in terms of design work and making changes on the back-end. We are also thinking of additional details along the way as we're figuring out our market strategy. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any feedback from this engagement?

Ronnie was patient along that way while I was doing diligence on him and his team. From day one since we've started working, I've been nothing but pleasantly surprised by the quality of work and by the delivery and professionalism. He's been someone we can call on and know for sure the work is being taken care of without fail. He's constantly delivering in advance of the deadline we put in front of him. Once we hired a CTO, the CTO was actually annoyed by the fact that he wasn't finding more bugs in the work.

How did Nisos Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

I rarely say this about any teams or individuals, but I have absolutely nothing but great things to say about Nisos Technologies's performance and delivery of work. Everything was delivered before the scheduled date and the quality of work was fantastic. There was a lot of them guiding us as to what needs to be done since we didn't have the tech background.

Is there anything Nisos Technologies could have improved or done differently?

I think everything that we wanted was well delivered. I don't think there's been any situation during the past nine months where we've been unhappy, disappointed, or felt that someone else might be able to do a better job. I can't think of anything that I would say needs to be improved.