Sunbytes

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am an executive at a Sports Event Management Software Company

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

The #1 tool for organizing sports events. With us, you can arrange everything from registration to bib numbers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Sunbytes to accomplish?

• Improving security posture of our software suite, testing new authentication layer, verifying security measures.

SOLUTION

How did you find Sunbytes?

Referral

Why did you select Sunbytes over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me

How many teammates from Sunbytes were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Sunbytes conducted a security assessment on our SaaS application. Sunbytes delivered a report outlining all identified and classified vulnerabilities and deficiencies in security measures. Before and the actual execution of the pentest we had meetings to align our goals and expectations. After the pentest we discussed the findings in the report. Sunbytes made sure that everything was clear to us and offered further services and assistance, such as a retest or consultancy services.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

1. The delivery of a high quality certified and standardized pentest result, based on manual and automatic pentest efforts covering a wide range of (possible) security vulnerabilities.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

The overall project management was great. The communication was clear, the expectations were right and the project was executed according to the schedule. Sunbytes was also very flexible to take our schedule into account.

What was your primary form of communication with Sunbytes?

Virtual Meeting

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

We were impressed by the vulnerabilities that were discovered. We can tell that the pentesters digged deep to discover the vulnerabilities, and not just a surface scan.

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

We are very happy with the services, and don't see areas that need big improvement. We liked to receive updates about the progress (i.e. once or twice).

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Product Manager of Recurrent Ventures

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We’re a digital media company for passionate audiences; with social responsibility at the center of our storytelling, our trusted household name brands meet people where they are and grow with them.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Sunbytes to accomplish?

• CMS Migrations
• Website Development
• DevOps Engineering
• QA Engineering

SOLUTION

How did you find Sunbytes?

Referral

Why did you select Sunbytes over others?

• High ratings
• Pricing fit our budget
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Sunbytes were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Sunbytes software engineers handle bug mitigation, SEO improvements, and feature development of our WordPress-based CMS. They also maintain websites on older systems, waiting for migration to our common platform. Sunbytes' scope of work spans 10+ news websites with over 60 million monthly unique visitors. Their key deliverables include but are not limited to completing engineering sprints on time and in scope, ideating SEO improvements with PM's, and expanding our common platform.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Once we involved Sunbytes in our codebase and project we saw measure improvements in the following: Better stability on notoriously unreliable sites, an increase in search rankings, and completion of product development at a more efficient rate.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Project management is one of the key services that Sunbytes provides. Since Sunbytes works opposite time zones to Recurrent, we have a dedicated Sunbytes Project Manager who makes sure Sunbytes Engineers stay on task and unblocked. Sunbytes project management also contributes to road mapping and project planning, collaborating with Recurrent to ship products on time. Sunbytes regularly responds to urgent business needs and goes out of their way to make sure we accomplish what needs to be done.

What was your primary form of communication with Sunbytes?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

We are impressed with the skill set the Sunbytes engineers have. As we have onboarded more Sunbytes staff, they get brought up to speed at an incredibly fast rate and hit the ground running, eager to learn more. Their engineers also have a wide breadth of knowledge. Engineers are experts in multiple areas of web development, and that provides us with a well-rounded knowledge base to pull from.

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

While minimal, I do think that Sunbytes can improve its ability to forecast the level of effort it takes to complete tasks.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CTO of SandGrain BV

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We make an immutable "electronic barcode" for IoT end nodes, supported by a central cloud platform for globally unique identities.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Sunbytes to accomplish?

• To develop our cloud platform software
• To hire and manage the team

SOLUTION

How did you find Sunbytes?

was contacted by Sunbytes

Why did you select Sunbytes over others?

• Great culture fit
• Company values aligned
• TaaS business concept

How many teammates from Sunbytes were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Sunbytes does integral development of our Azure cloud platform, based on our high level architecture and functional requirements. This includes the full development flow, from architecture, security reviews, back end development, devops, quality testing and documentation.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Already after 3 sprints functional prototype of the platform and service, which is extended with every sprint. Functionality proven to be correct in verification tests with prototype hardware.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

There is a dedicated project manager, who takes care of all internal team alignment. So far delivery very much in line with expectations. Good alignment with our internal product owner, very responsive.

What was your primary form of communication with Sunbytes?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Their commitment and engagement are impressive. Purely based on mutual trust Sunbytes started to assemble the team at their own risk even before we had our seed investment signed. When that happened we could make a flying start. Also the way they organize the Teams-as-a-Service is very effective, where we were especially impressed by their rigorous hiring process to select the best candidates in a very short term.

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

Not really, although any solution that gives more co-location of the team members improves efficiency further. At this moment people are still very scattered across multiple countries. But I realize that is a compromise vs. speed of hiring and quality.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of Empire Software Holdings, the tech arm of a publishing company. We build software primarily for in-house use, but we also build software and SaaS tools to sell to the broader market in the digital publishing space. We create content management and advertising solutions, as well as other solutions for the various aspects that come from digital publishing.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sunbytes?

Initially, we wanted to scale our engineering teams efficiently and cost-effectively, especially within niche areas like WordPress development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

First, Sunbytes provided us with their PHP and JavaScript expertise on a full-stack development approach, specifically on the PHP side. Their WordPress experience was a major plus, and we soon discovered their ability to think outside of the WordPress context regarding app and software development.

As we continued working with Sunbytes, we hit other use cases. Now, we’re growing our team in-house and abroad, ensuring that we have enough engineers to tackle the development challenges that arise.

We have a pretty large organization, and Sunbytes is now one of the key parts of our operations. They’re integrated into our product and our regular software development lifecycles, and they handle a lot of operational tasks on top of the specific areas of expertise we hired them for.

Their approach has been pretty flexible, and they’ve integrated very deeply into our organization. As they act as part of our in-house team, we never exclude them from any day-to-day decisions.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked directly with eight people from Sunbytes, and we’ve received support from another 4–5 people. These people don’t work directly with us, but they’re communication liaisons from the Sunbytes’ side.

We initially started working with a single engineer, and their involvement was pretty straightforward. As we’ve grown, their team has become larger, and we expanded the number of engineers. Aside from developers, we also get DevOps help from Sunbytes as well.

How did you come to work with Sunbytes?

I did a pretty broad, worldwide exploration, looking for various offshore and onshore options in the market. The key factors I was looking for during that search were a specific skill set and a great level of dedication. I was also looking for a smaller boutique shop that would treat us as a priority.

Most of my search was through Google, during which I identified a couple of key players inside that market that would fit our needs. We found Sunbytes when we were exploring the Asian market. We had an interview process with them and various other competitors worldwide, and we narrowed our options down. Ultimately, we chose Sunbytes, and we’ve been working with them ever since.

How much have you invested in them?

We’ve spent over $500,000 at this point.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in January 2020, and our partnership is ongoing. We’ll continue working with them for the foreseeable future.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The biggest success metric is the code development throughput that Sunbytes has helped us achieve. Our organization is growing rapidly, and we’ve gone from eight to 220 in-house staff members across multiple companies within a year and a half, not counting the resources that Sunbytes provides us. We’ve been able to sustain that growth, keep our clients happy, and keep our business profitable, and Sunbytes has been a big part of that; we wouldn’t have been able to expand without them.

How did Sunbytes perform from a project management standpoint?

Sunbytes’ flexibility and onboarding timeframes are very helpful. Whenever we’ve requested extra help for one of our various projects, they’ve been able to identify resources and get them up to speed very quickly. The average onboarding time takes 4–5 weeks, which is below the average of other development companies I’ve worked with.

As for project management, we use Jira to manage the tickets and workflow, and we have some of our own GitHub infrastructure set up.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The communication and collaboration with Sunbytes’ leadership are impressive. We’re capable of having very open and honest conversations, which help us identify areas of improvement and, ultimately, get results.

Together, we’ve figured out other ways to go, and they’ve been with us along the way. This approach has also helped us manage the team efficiently, even though we’re in opposite time zones.

Additionally, Sunbytes’ WordPress expertise is also impressive. We didn’t have a lot of in-house experience with WordPress when we started working together, so working with them as part of our own team has been great. Our direct collaboration is very important.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The biggest challenge of working with Sunbytes was figuring out how to handle the different time zones. However, they were very flexible and willing to work in our time zone. That was the biggest improvement we were looking for, and they were able to adjust accordingly.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Talk directly to Sunbytes’ leadership and be honest about what you need.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm a project manager in 'digital counseling'.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Sunbytes, and what were your goals?

We needed ongoign support and development in Online Dossier, a product that was already used for client communication. The goal was to make it the production system for all of our professionals, to register their work and realize that clients always have access to their data.

SOLUTION

How did you select Sunbytes and what were the deciding factors?

The project leader knew Sunbytes/Simplefly form a past project.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

As a project manager I am mainly working on the user side. I cannot answer this question.

How many people from the Sunbytes team worked with you, and what were their positions?

The team grew to one project leader and four developers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

We had happy professionals and clients. And that's what matters to me.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

We have a team where FUN is one of the things that comes to mind. Also, we have very short lines; When we contact each other, it usually takes less than five minutes to respond and react.

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

Together, we grew into a partnership. I knew I had to teach them about social work, they knew I am a social worker with a little technical knowledge that needed to grow.

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

We sometimes had difficulties in getting a realistic scope. That has improved last year.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am an executive for MethodeMeter

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

MethodeMeter is a platform that supports schools in exploring, choosing and effectively applying teaching methods.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Sunbytes to accomplish?

• privacy-safety

SOLUTION

How did you find Sunbytes?

Referral

Why did you select Sunbytes over others?

Referred to me

How many teammates from Sunbytes were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

The scope of the pentest of MethodeMeter was to execute a black box penetration test where the pentesting party had little to no knowledge of the environment they were testing. All that was provided was the URL to the website. The goal was to find vulneabilities on site level, within the used framework and in the hosting solution.  De results of the pentest where usefull and supported the development team.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Strengthening cybersecurity and protecting privacy.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Sunbytes communicate clearly and guide you through the process step by step. Ensuring you can easily follow along. They provide a clear summary of their findings along with an action list.

The team is flexible and actively thinks along with you, ensuring smooth and pleasant collaboration.

What was your primary form of communication with Sunbytes?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Their commitment, engagement and skill sets are impressive.

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

-

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Director of 3Rs Centre Utrecht

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We facilitate researchers in their efforts to replace, reduce and refine experimental animal use.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Sunbytes to accomplish?

• Reprogram a database
• Migrate all information from old database to new database
• Upgrade the user experience of the database

SOLUTION

How did you find Sunbytes?

Referral

Why did you select Sunbytes over others?

Referred to me

How many teammates from Sunbytes were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Reprogramming of a web based database from a unconventional CMS to Wordpress followed by the migration of the database content. Lastly, the database user experience was ameliorated.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

All targets were met in time.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Excellent. Frequent feedback sessions, realistic planning and on time finalization.

What was your primary form of communication with Sunbytes?

Virtual Meeting

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

Their personal approach was impressive, and the project was really done together.

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

No.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am a Manager at Topicus

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We are Topicus. We connect technology, platforms and data. For healthcare, finance, education and the social domain.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Sunbytes to accomplish?

• Recruitment

SOLUTION

How did you find Sunbytes?

Network

Why did you select Sunbytes over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Sunbytes were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Sunbytes helped us finding suitable candidates for our open positions. Their expertise helped us to quickly fill multiple open positions.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Via the partnership with Sunbytes, we have been able to hire some of the best talent. Our team is now stronger than ever.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Sunbytes has put a lot of effort in understanding our needs by having in-person conversations and most importantly, by asking the right questions. I never had to wait long for responses and we filled our open positions quickly.

What was your primary form of communication with Sunbytes?

• In-Person Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

The technical skills of the staff involved in the recruitment process and the understanding of the market.

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

I have no improvement suggestions at this moment.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

As an external IT consultant I've been tasked with guiding the development of Online Dossier and newer version of the Electronic Patient documentation system for our customer Kwadraad. Kwadraad is a social work organisation providing social work guidance to people in over 40 municipalities in the sout-west of The Netherlands.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Sunbytes, and what were your goals?

Sunbytes has provided us with a team as a service where their developers where fluently integrated in our team to develop software in an agile way. When customers including Kwadraad would come up with requests this would be translated into epic's and user stories, given development weight and planned from the backlog if needed.

The developers would then proceed building those features and have them tested untill the point we can release them. This way we where able to do releases every day. Furthermore there was technical debt so we decided to build a complete new Online Dossier, where Sunbytes delivers UX/UI capacity for, architecture support and a multi disciplinary development team. All with people both in Vietnam as in The Netherlands.

SOLUTION

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

Offshoring work often finds its root in cost saving, availability of skills, focus of the team and flexibility of hiring people in another timezone. For Kwadraad all of these apply: where working with people that have 4 hours of work time before the Dutch working day started has added benefit in development and releasing software, every Vietnamese morning this could be easily done without interrupting business.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

We're using several software development supporting tools, project management tools and agile scrum related tools to build a way of tracking work, planning work and gathering the needed information to have beautiful software build by our team in Vietnam. The Vietnamese side has it's own project manager that takes care of the planning over there and focusses on development excellence, showing the build speed and planned speed and delivers the overview of frontend and backend development points.

The new platform is fully containerized and build with latest development technologies.

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

Company owner, project manager, quality manager, several level 1 to level 3 engineers and developers, depending of the project phase 4 to 10 people in total.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

We've been around 10% ahead of planned development points, that we could use to build special requests from customers.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Very open, consequent and complete. At any time I can easily see where we stand. The cultural differences are automatically solved due to the fact that Sunbytes is a Dutch-Vietnamese company. So you get a mixed style of focus and a can-do mentality and an open and honest approach to your project.

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

They have relentlessly worked on our software. The working ethics are different then ours - we feel like we need to slow down things sometime more then having to ever push anyone.

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

At the start we had to learn about Vietnamese culture while working with our team. Saying no is not something someone from many asian countries easily does. So having guidance in this aspect from the Dutch co-worked towards the Vietnamese team members proved helpful optimizing a realistic approach on planning and realism of our requests.