ClickIT DevOps & Software Development

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of engineering for a digital products company. 

What challenge were you trying to address with ClickIT DevOps & Software Development?

We needed help with some DevOps work.

What was the scope of their involvement?

ClickIT provided us with a developer who wrote Terraform scripts to control services inside AWS. 

What is the team composition?

I worked with Jorge (DevOps Engineer) and Mario (Project Manager), our point of contact.

How did you come to work with ClickIT DevOps & Software Development?

They were referred by someone I trusted.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our engagement lasted from January 2019–December 2021. 

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

ClickIT’s code was functional. Their work was good throughout our relationship. 

How did ClickIT DevOps & Software Development perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicated through Slack and Zoom.

What did you find most impressive about them?

ClickIT was communicative and friendly, and their team was enthusiastic and displayed care for the quality of their work. Jorge clearly wanted to do a good job. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

Whenever Jorge got caught up with problems, he stayed on the task a little longer than he should, instead of immediately stepping back and asking for help.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Communicate with them as much as possible and do a lot of verification. Check-in with their team a couple of times a day and have open communication — have a lot of casual conversations so they’ll feel safe coming forward. 

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CTO at Strike Graph, where we help companies meet and manage cybersecurity compliance requirements. By delivering solutions that simplify the security landscape, we help organizations attend to critical security issues, not just security theater.

For what projects/services did your company hire ClickIT DevOps & Software Development, and what were your goals?

We initially hired ClickIT to replicate the infrastructure in our development environment in upper-level environments. Since completion of that initial project, we've retained a software engineer from ClickIt to help manage and update our infrastructure to improve and maintain site reliability, security, automation, and performance.

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

Unknown - selected before I joined the team.

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

The initial role of the software engineer on the project was to launch the infrastructure in our development environment into upper-level environments. While the development infra was functional at that time, it was not automated or production-ready, and there was no infrastructure documentation. They improved some of the Terraform templates, making the infra easier to maintain and more reliable. They added automation using Gitlab pipelines and later helped us implement Terraform Cloud workspaces. They also helped us integrate monitoring and logging solutions both within AWS and using New Relic. They added helpful documentation and collaborated closely with the rest of the engineering team.

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

1, Infrastructure Engineer

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

ClickIt has been invaluable to helping our small startup manage our infrastructure needs. From the beginning of the project, they were communicative and responsive. It was a challenging project at the beginning because the infrastructure workflow wasn't documented, and they quickly jumped in a developed an understanding of the current state. They created helpful documentation, and the engineer's knowledge about Terraform has helped us improve existing templates as well as create new, automated infrastructure when the need arose.

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

We have daily standups with the infrastructure engineer and recurrent 1:1 meetings to discuss progress and next steps. The collaboration and communication with our tema has bee smooth, and they are available and responsive when questions and issues arise. 

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

The Infrastructure Engineer effectively navigated an existing infra codebase and helped adapt processes to better meet our needs.

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

With any new and changing startup, there are hiccups along the way. At times, we needed to provide unexpected guidance to ensure that outcomes were robust and met our requirements.

We eventually realized that, to meet our long-term needs, we would benefit from hiring a staff engineer with a strong infra/devops background to support and expand the capacity we had with our ClickIt contractor. The collaboration between these two engineers has provided additional support and guidance for the ClickIt engineer. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am currently the Project Manager for a fintech company that has been in operation for around 20 years. We offer world-class technology to the masses.

What challenge were you trying to address with ClickIT Smart Technologies?

We’ve had various projects with them over the last five years. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

Running mission-critical workloads means that we need to provide 24-hour support. We have teams in multiple time zones now, so we can offer true 24-hour support for our platforms, regardless of what’s going on. Specifically, we like to do a lot of our infrastructure maintenance, upgrades, and deployments at times of low utilization, and that works out well with the time zone difference between us and ClickIT Smart Technologies.

We started small and gathered a bit of momentum and trust. ClickIT Smart Technologies has been working on a select few projects since then, handling them from start to finish. There’s no end date for our relationship. ClickIT Smart Technologies is now a full-time resource within our company.

What is the team composition?

We currently have one full-time engineer from ClickIT Smart Technologies, who’s basically embedded into our organization remotely. We’ve been working with him for the last eight months.

How did you come to work with ClickIT Smart Technologies?

The relationship really kicked off, not just because of my trust in ClickIT Smart Technologies but also because of their ability to provide services outside of working hours and always going above and beyond.

We’ve identified trust as one of the most critical aspects of working with third parties, and we can't overstate how much we trust ClickIT Smart Technologies.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent at least $50,000 with them to date, and this will increase substantially over the coming years as we tie in more and more services.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our relationship started at the end of 2015 and is ongoing. 

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

Everything’s working well, and we love what they’re doing. We want to give them more work to get more value out of the relationship. They handle security and customer compliance, and we’ve never failed third-party compliance test.

The collaboration has been a resounding success; they're able to deliver quality work in a professional and ethical way. Their work is high-quality, and our services to end customers reflect that.

What we value the most about our partnership with ClickIT Smart Technologies is that they don’t necessarily work to industry norms in terms of relationships. They absolutely go above and beyond. ClickIT Smart Technologies always keep the bigger picture in mind.

We've taken on 100% of their recommendations to date because they're aligned with our goals and understand the importance of compliance to industry standards at all times.

ClickIT Smart Technologies is hitting all the metrics we need them to hit!

How did ClickIT Smart Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

We have very good project management tools, and we communicate with them effectively. They haven’t failed to deliver on any deadline or task.

We communicate effectively over voice and other messaging services. They’ve consistently impressed me with their service delivery and project management ethos. They work within our timelines, and they give us feedback that we then integrate into our platform pipeline.

I don’t need to micromanage any of their team members. They give me detailed plans for the work, and they’re extremely strong in terms of internal processes and client communication.

ClickIT Smart Technologies is extremely transparent about what they can and can’t do, and they won’t take on anything they feel won’t be delivered up to the security and time-frame requirements.

They’re a bit smaller as an organization, so they’re extremely flexible and agile. Like ourselves, they’re willing to go the extra mile for their customers, and they’re extremely flexible. If we need support at certain times or ask them for support on things that aren't their specific expertise, they’ll work it into their pipeline.

What did you find most impressive about them?

So far, everything ClickIT Smart Technologies has done in terms of management and interactions with us has shown that they have the interests of our company integrated into their ethos.

Their team is professional, and they communicate really well. They’re fluent English speakers, and there are absolutely zero language barriers.

They’re extremely knowledgeable on their services, and they’re always looking at integrating the latest and greatest features of AWS and general cloud infrastructures. They’re always looking at new certifications and actively pushing different products.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We face some challenges due to the time difference, but I can’t think of a single scenario where I was let down or there was something disconcerting about how they were operating.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the CTO and founder of a fintech startup. We're developing technologies for two main areas: remittances from Europe and the US mainly to Latin America, and a digital marketing tool that allows us to market to the recipients of the remittances in a more efficient and cost-effective manner. 

What challenge were you trying to address with ClickIT Smart Technologies?

They’ve mainly been providing DevOps services.

What was the scope of their involvement?

ClickIT Smart Technologies is managing our AWS infrastructure, making sure that it's secure and that it meets different international financial compliance requirements.

For example, know your customer (KYC) is a market standard that applies to anyone facilitating money transfers abroad. We have to know who our senders and recipients are, and whether or not they’re on any blacklist.

They’re managing our VPNs, ensuring that our data is kept in a safe environment. We have employees across different countries, and ClickIT Smart Technologies makes sure that their computers have anti-malware software installed and updated.

They’ve also helped us with architecture.

What is the team composition?

I’ve worked with two DevOps specialists from ClickIT Smart Technologies, including Alfonso (CEO).

How did you come to work with ClickIT Smart Technologies?

I don’t like to hire people I don’t know, so ClickIT Smart Technologies came as a reference from an outsourcing house in Peru that had worked with them before. I talked with Alfonso and found that he had what we needed, so I hired them.

How much have you invested with them?

The cost so far is $25,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with ClickIT Smart Technologies around July 2018, and it’s ongoing.

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

ClickIT Smart Technologies is a knowledgeable team. I had a third party review ClickIT Smart Technologies' work to secure my infrastructure, for the purpose of getting certified under payment card industry and ISO/IEC 27001 compliance.

I was told that we could probably get the first certification in about a month, and the second would take about half the time it usually does. Getting the product certified was a major milestone, and reaching it was due to their work.

How did ClickIT Smart Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

I communicate with them via Slack, and they respond very quickly. They're based in Mexico, while I’m in Japan, my partner lives in Boston, and our main office is in Madrid. We’re working across three different time zones, but ClickIT Smart Technologies is able to deliver anything we ask from them within a 24-hour period.

I’ve just requested them to send me an architectural background of the IT services for our two products, and they did it very quickly.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their knowledge base truly impressed me. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

They didn’t respond to some of my requests in a timely manner at one point, but I discussed it with them, and they were proactive in addressing the situation.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Clients should make sure they have written down their specs. It's important that both parties agree on the scope of the project from day one so that there are no misunderstandings.

I’m able to communicate with them in Spanish, and Alfonso also speaks English very well, but the other team member doesn’t. Clients should make sure that the communication is done in written form and that it’s clear.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of CRiskCo. We provide credit analysis for small and medium-sized businesses.

What challenge were you trying to address with ClickIT Smart Technologies?

We needed support for cloud services with Azure and AWS. We also needed to make sure that we were compliant in the financing world.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They reviewed what gaps we had in our current infrastructure of our cloud services in order to comply with industry standards. We needed to be able to meet the challenges our clients need from a security perspective. After reviewing our platform, they planned how to roll out the changes. The plan included a  timeline, schedule, and steps to complete everything.

Connecting to the Azure servers, AWS cloud services.

What is the team composition?

We work with one person doing dev-ops for us.

How did you come to work with ClickIT Smart Technologies?

We connected at a conference last year.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $20,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in February 2020 and it’s ongoing.

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

They’ve delivered one milestone after another with minimal interference with my tech team. They’re still working on the infrastructure. They delivered everything as requested. They’ve been a tremendous help.

How did ClickIT Smart Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve met their deadlines. They came very organized. With the first week of planning, they quickly understood the challenges ahead. They followed a schedule for work and divided everything into milestones. Six months later, they continue to deliver based on those milestones. They anticipate everything going forward and are very professional.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re professionals and they know what they’re doing. They communicated with me and my CTO on a regular basis. They ensured that the project was advancing based on our expectations and actually cared about our success.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. They met my expectations very well.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Communication is key. Set expectations, talk about the challenges, and let them learn about what challenges you're facing. Then work together to mitigate risk and solve those problems.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We make industrial wearables and cloud enterprise software for a variety of industries including warehousing and military applications. I am the VP.

For what projects/services did your company hire ClickIT Smart Technologies?

We needed outsourced web developers to augment our engineering team and help us build out our web platform.

What were your goals for this project?

The main goal was to have more hands on deck to help get through our backlog of items so we could release new features, improvements, and bugfixes quicker. We wanted to be able to react to customer feedback quickly.

How did you select this vendor?

We went through a rigorous search of outsourcing companies and narrowed a majority of them down based on location alone. Being a west coast based company, we wanted devs that were close to our timezone so we could collaborate easily. We conducted interviews with ClickIT's developers they had to offer and we felt comfortable bringing one onboard, so that's how we decided to use ClickIT.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Over the course of the time we've had ClickIT developers working with us, we've been able to release a number of significant improvements and new features to our web application. We've been able to rework how our website looks and how data is presented so our customers can gain insights on their business operations.

What was the team composition?

We've worked with one project manager and two developers so far. The project manager would find new developers for us to interview when we wanted to bring on more developers. The developers that were brought on were immediately treated as if they were part of the core engineering team.

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

We've been able to release new updates to our web application more frequently and respond to customer feedback much faster. This has undoubtedly benefited our customer relationships by proving that we can respond quickly. Our customers have stated they like our web application and the features it provides which wouldn't have been possible without ClickIT.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The developers from ClickIT were integrated to the team as if they were part of the core team, which means they used the same project management tools we used. That included JIRA for issue management, Bitbucket for code, and Slack for communication. We also used Google Hangouts and Zoom to conduct daily standups remotely.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The developers that we've worked with are great. They take the initiative to do things, they respond to feedback well, and they always keep the bigger picture in mind. Their code is developed with care and they work hard to deliver by deadlines. They are everything you want out of developers on your team and then some.

Are there any areas for improvement?

I don't think there is much areas for improvement, we like working with ClickIT so far and will continue to work with in the future.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a co-founder and business development CRO of a fintech company. We’re developing a banking-as-a-service platform, and we provide technology to different banks. Although we’re based in New York, and we also have an office in Mexico City.

What challenge were you trying to address with ClickIT Smart Technologies?

We needed to create a new platform infrastructure for one of the banks we’re partnered with. Our team needed to deliver this system in a quick turnaround but didn’t have the internal capabilities to do so.

What was the scope of their involvement?

There were specifications that we needed to deliver in 2–3 months, and ClickIT helped us develop that environment and its related infrastructure. The development was based on the specifications that the bank gave us. ClickIT worked on the DevOps components for the infrastructure. They implemented a very difficult hardware security module (HSM) as well as managed Azure and AWS.

What is the team composition?

We worked with two people from ClickIT on this project.

How did you come to work with ClickIT Smart Technologies?

After evaluating different companies, we connected with ClickIT through a common friend.

How much have you invested with them?

We invested between $30,000–$40,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with ClickIT from September 2019–January 2020.

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

Overall, we had a great experience with them. They delivered on time, even though it was a challenging turnaround. There wasn’t that much time to figure out all the specifications of the bank. The dates were pretty rigid. We needed to deliver certain pieces every 2–3 weeks and knew the bank would kill the project if we didn’t meet those deadlines. ClickIT did a great job.

Our team is usually not a big fan of outsourcing work because we’ve had some bad experiences in the past. However, ClickIT knew what they were doing and had a great work ethic. We worked in the background, making sure they delivered the needed requirements.

How did ClickIT Smart Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

They always met deadlines, and we had great communication. ClickIT shared what they were working on every day — both achievements and roadblocks. We held weekly meetings to check the progress and used common project tracking tools like Jira.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The bank had a unique specification — which was overall really complex — more so because of the timelines. ClickIT delivered everything in a timely manner, and at the quality that a top-quality bank in the US would require. Overall, I was impressed.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there are no areas for improvement. I mentioned it to ClickIT that we aren’t fans of outsourcing, but we took a leap of faith and it worked out. We’ve had a great experience overall, and they showed that from the beginning. Some people on our side were fearful in the beginning, but as ClickIT started to execute, they got comfortable.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Alight is one of America’s fastest-growing companies, working with some of the nation’s biggest brands and most cutting-edge marketing agencies to help them take control of their marketing data, so they can produce richer business insights – faster. My position is Director of Platform Development, responsible for 4 development teams and devops.

For what projects/services did your company hire ClickIT Smart Technologies?

We needed expertise in devops for our AWS cloud infrastructure. ClickIT provides us with a consulting resource on an ongoing basis. Our dev group really feels like Jonhatan is part of the team here at Alight.

What were your goals for this project?

To bring expertise and add extra capacity in devops to our team, with the goals of automating our builds and testing in Jenkins and improving and extending our AWS infrastructure.

How did you select this vendor?

We looked into multiple vendors who could provide devops services, interviewed ClickIT on the phone, and visited with their team on-site.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Jonhatan has taken on several projects in the past year, extending our build and deploy automation in Jenkins, organizing and securing our AWS infrastructure, and more. He also assisted in answering technical questions and troubleshooting on many occasions. In 2020, we are looking to tackle configuring our infrastructure via code using Terraform or CloudFormation - we anticipate Jonhatan playing a prominent role in that major project.

What was the team composition?

Just Jonhatan in a consulting role from ClickIT. On our side we have one engineer with responsibility to manage and plan devops projects.

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

In a year we have gone from after-hours deployments that took an hour or more and involved dozens of steps, to regularly deploying multiple times per day in minutes with the push of a button. This saves us time and money and keeps our development team focused on what they do best. We've also increased the security of our AWS infrastructure and passed the first pen test our organization has conducted.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Project management was almost all on our side, with a senior engineer responsible for planning and oversight of devops projects.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Jonathan has proven to be a valuable asset for our company, and is viewed by our company as part of the team. ClickIT is very responsive to our needs, getting back with answers to questions in a timely manner.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and co-founder of Coworker.com. We're a global marketplace for coworking space.

What challenge were you trying to address with ClickIT Smart Technologies?

We were scaling fast and started having a lot of DevOps issues. We didn’t have anyone on our internal team that was specialized to manage that for us.

What was the scope of their involvement?

ClickIT manages our DevOps including AWS products, Fail2ban, and Cloudflare. Their main job right now is cleaning up our database, adding indexes, and strengthening the existing code.

What is the team composition?

We work directly with the CEO as well as two developers.

How did you come to work with ClickIT Smart Technologies?

We found them through Upwork. I had a call with their CEO and was impressed with his approach to DevOps as well as his demeanor and communication style. That’s why we ended up going with them. I explained what I was looking for in a developer and they had a good match for us. We started working with them via Upwork and now work together directly.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in March 2018 and it’s ongoing.

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

They’ve had massive results in terms of improving the code we already had. For example, one of their developers reduced the time for a query that our in-house developers had built from 8 seconds to .1 seconds.

How did ClickIT Smart Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Basecamp, Trello, and Slack. They've been great at slotting into our existing communication structure rather than imposing theirs on us. They have great communication skills, including perfect English, and are very responsive at all times.

The best thing about working with them is that they feel like a part of our team. When I’ve used external agencies in the past, there was always an “us and them” dynamic. With ClickIT, they’re fully integrated into our team. We’re constantly on Slack together to talk about the projects. They’re fun—and just great people to work with.

What did you find most impressive about them?

What I really love is that ClickIT has our business interests in mind. A DevOps engineer we worked with before recommended high-tech solutions that were ahead of what we needed. ClickIT understands that we’re a startup. They make recommendations based on what they think is the most cost-effective solution and don’t push other things on us.

Their developers also have strong DevOps and full-stack development skills. They’re efficient and the code is clean. I can’t say enough good things about them. They're diamonds in the rough. I wasn't expecting to find such brilliant engineers to work with when I first hired them. I was blown away.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. We started working together in mid-March and now it's December—and we've had no issues at all.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a concert promotion company. We sell tickets online for massive cultural, sports, and music events in the northern area of Mexico.

What challenge were you trying to address with ClickIT?

They designed and developed our platform, which included an online payment system.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They built a Node.js and Bootstrap application on the Google Cloud Platform.

What is the team composition?

There consisted of about five people and a team leader.

How did you come to work with ClickIT?

I know the owner personally, but they had been referred to us before.

How much have you invested in them?

The project was developed in two stages. The first one cost around 103,000 Mexican Pesos (approximately $5,405 USD) and it increased after that.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in June 2016 and ended the collaboration around September. The project lasted about three months in total.

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

The platform has helped us increase our sales by 70%. While we have encountered some minor issues such as duplicated tickets and other inconsistencies, they managed to fix them quickly. If I had to grade them, I’d give them an 8 out of 10.

How did Click IT perform from a project management standpoint?

They were always available, open to any questions, and willing to help.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They met our expectations. We had a good working relationship, but there was nothing exceptional.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I couldn’t mention anything. Everything has been okay.