Codster

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the cloud and DevOps manager at Prime MX, the largest authorized AT&T distributor in Mexico. We have more than 560 stores and offer telephony services and personalized customer service.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Codster?

We needed to modernize our application. Although we were already on AWS, we needed a technology transformation to better support our users and build the foundation for the future adoption of emerging technologies, such as AI.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Codster has handled the end-to-end modernization of our web app platform under an extended team model, laying the foundation of the architecture we run on today. Their scope has included defining the target architecture and technology framework, designing and developing the serverless (AWS Lambda) services with unit and coverage testing, and integrating the appropriate AWS services for each use case (Secrets Manager, S3, EC2, CodeBuild, CodePipeline, among others).
They’ve also embedded security throughout the project through DevSecOps practices, implemented an Agile development methodology, supported the database design and setup for high availability with replication, trained our internal team, and supported the production rollout.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with 2–5 teammates from Codster.

How did you come to work with Codster?

AWS recommended them to us as a partner. In an in-person meeting, we shared our requirements. They showed strong technical expertise and offered multiple options tailored to our needs and budget, recommending architecture best practices and covering security topics. Their added value over other options came from acting as a partner rather than a vendor, which is what won us over.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $50,000 to $199,999.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together from May 2023 to July 2023, and the project was completed successfully. Since then, we’ve continued working with Codster under an ongoing extended team engagement.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The project has produced clear, measurable results. Platform availability has increased from roughly 80% to 99.9%, eliminating the frequent emergency fixes we previously dealt with. AWS costs have dropped by 15%, and attacks against the platform have decreased significantly after properly configuring AWS perimeter security components.
As a result, user perception of the system has improved noticeably thanks to its new stability. We’ve tracked the volume of blocked and malicious requests through AWS WAF metrics and logs in CloudWatch, which has shown a clear drop in attack attempts reaching the application (SQL injection, bot traffic, and brute-force attempts, among others).
We’ve also compared the number of security-related incidents handled by our IT team before and after the project, which has fallen significantly along with the emergency fixes that used to be frequent.
In addition, on Codster’s recommendation, we’ve adopted SonarQube for secure code analysis as part of our development pipeline, and we generate security reports with Aikido, which gives us continuous visibility into vulnerabilities and confirms the sustained improvement in our security posture.
On the quantitative side, we’ve tracked the reduction in support tickets related to system issues, which has dropped significantly after the modernization and served as our main indicator of platform stability. On the qualitative side, we’ve gathered direct feedback from our users, who consistently report a much more reliable and responsive experience compared to the previous platform.

How did Codster perform from a project management standpoint?

Codster’s project management has been clear and well-structured. There’s always been full transparency regarding timelines, which we’ve primarily defined based on our business priorities. As in any project, there have been some deviations along the way, but they’ve been driven by external factors rather than by Codster. In every case, they’ve been communicated proactively and handled appropriately, with the plan readjusted without affecting the overall outcome.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Beyond their strong technical skills, Codster’s ability to work as one team with us and their real engagement with our goals have been impressive. They have a deep command of most topics and always bring multiple options to solve any problem.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Honestly, nothing significant comes to mind. Any minor adjustments along the way have been addressed quickly and collaboratively, and the overall experience has exceeded our expectations.