CodeBites

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a lecturer at the American University of Armenia.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

For thirty years I collected a very unstructured set of historical data needing systematic and restricted web access. The breadth of many gigabytes of data included 70,000 news articles, thousands of timeline entries, videos, HTMLs, pictures, PDFs, and other ASCII texts.

SOLUTION

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

I knew one of the founders of Codebites, a graduate of the American University of Armenia, and knew the capabilities of his recent hires. This was crucial because I needed both broad and specific skill sets for the success of this project.

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

I have managed and participated in many IT projects throughout the years. I understood my project goals, the specific relational database, big data, and the web design required. We had an introductory meeting detailing the project goals and the breadth, quality, and types of data (in various unstructured states) that had to be accessed from a simple point, not unlike a google search.

Within a week, we had a follow-up meeting where the CodeBites engineers described their solution methodology. Their solution was written to be easily transported across operating systems. The initial product was targeted at CentOS Linux.

An interim meeting was setup to discuss project status and provided demonstrations. We only required one more session to discuss the installation of their solution on my server. Being at the peak of the pandemic, a decision was made to install their final product remotely.

Their solution functioned as promised. Moreover, within a couple of months, the unfortunate status of CentOS Linux required a move to Ubuntu. I gave Codebites a call asking them to port their solution to Ubuntu. They said the solution was not OS-targeted and, within 45 mins has re-installed their SW on Ubuntu remotely. Codebites's solution has performed flawlessly for nearly a year!

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

As I recall, there were mainly two engineers, but I worked closely with the engineer that installed their solution on my server.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Simply stated, what was promised was delivered much earlier than I had expected from past experience with software projects.

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

I had experience in software project management and understood the basic requirements software designers usually need. I also knew what was reasonable to expect given state-of-the-art technology.

I almost felt like a team member; thus, they felt somewhat open describing why they chose the tools, applications, databases, and web front-end solutions to solve the functionality I required.

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

They knew exactly what they had to do. They knew how to both integrate the types of data I had collected and a central page from where to search and display the data.

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

Not really based on my experience with Codebites.