SMART NET

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a company that more or less offers one-stop, large-scale broker-dealer and white labelling services. We are predominant in the US options market space, so we handle an awful lot of US options routing which is a large portion of our business. We do US equities as well.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SMART NET?

I was looking for a DevOps and systems integrations help from SMART NET.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

When we initially engaged with SMART NET, they were doing ad hoc work for our company as we were expanding our computer systems operations monitoring. We had just done a deal to have our network be outsourced and managed by another third-party service provider. 

The SMART NET team does everything for us remotely and has provided level one and level two operations assistance. We started with training sessions to familiarize them with how to support our applications and their critical components. It was more or less a reverse engineering and documentation process from an operational standpoint. We eventually expanded to having them monitor some of our systems for five and a half by 24 hours. 

Now they’re handing overnight shutdowns and start-up processes as well as integration work on the weekends. I also lean on them for strengthening our services in the event of system failures and implementation redundancy. We have them on hand for introducing DB8 services and engineering resources for the level one and level two layers. I’m currently working with them on optimizing how our clustering is set up inside our environment. 

What is the team composition?

We were initially engaged with 3–4 people. 

How did you come to work with SMART NET?

SMART NET was already engaged with the company at the time that I joined in about a year and a half ago. I was the one who kind of propagated their involvement forward. The idea came about to leverage them since they were already inside and familiar with a lot of our data center and software operations. They were a natural fit so I figured we could give them a shot. It has all worked out well for us.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve probably invested between $250,000–$500,000. There is a monthly service charge for what we have them do.

What is the status of this engagement?

We have an ongoing relationship. They started to provide services for this particular project in Q4 of 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

SMART NET is more or less an extension of our operations team at this point. They’ve become very familiar with our services and have been proactively making suggestions for improving services, changing management policies, and integrating procedures. We’ve become very efficient and can get a lot done with very few people.

How did SMART NET perform from a project management standpoint?

It was a little slow at the onset of the project since we were doing things offshore and were still trying to figure out the right sizing of members. However, as they began to introduce their greater capabilities, we’ve been able to move at a much faster pace.

They are very adaptable and accommodating in that they work during US hours and on holidays as well. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

SMART NET’s strength is in systems integration, network security, and mission-critical operations. They are able to do ad hoc projects and are good at creating Runbooks for new processes.

Are there any areas they could improve?

One thing they could improve on is the language barrier, but they are working on this.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you’re looking to implement mission-critical operations, SMART NET is definitely the company for that because they’re crafty, methodical, skilled, and very good at formulating plans.

Lay out for SMART NET what you’re initially trying to accomplish and where you’re trying to get to. Allow them to tell you if they think they have the capabilities to help you and let the team map out implementation over a specific timeline. Set realistic operations as well and feed them as much information as possible.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm network administrator and partly security administrator. Our company the most of biggest retail company in Ukraine which sale technics.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire SMART NET?

Migration from old main firewall and router to Fortigate NGFW

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Worked with them at previous company.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

First, Smartnet audited our old Firewall and router. Then proposed optimal design and plan to migrate to Fortigate. And then in common with me migrate to Fortigate

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

with me worked 2 engineer

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We are upgrading the most critical part of the company network to functionality. Now we can more stronger controlling all traffic in our network using Fortianalyzer.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

It was pretty easy for our command and their.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

They have very skilled engineers and were quick to answer our questions.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

i think none.