What was the scope of their involvement?
We worked with them in two arrangements. Originally, they were a part of a development team and they did about 50% of the coding. They were a part and parcel of the original development team for that application and we kept that arrangement. In addition, we had to develop two other applications not related to the original acquisition. One of them had to be done on Windows phone, which we have absolutely zero expertise for Windows on development. We hired them and we outsourced this project to them altogether, including QA, development, design, etc. That was a separate project that they did for us, and they continued to help us with the development of the original application.
How many resources were assigned to your project?
We worked with 2 of the founders, Alex and Alexey, and then we had another guy Sergei. There were 3 developers helping us with the medical application. On the other project, we interacted with maybe 3 or 4 developers, but I think they had more people working than that.
What features and functionality did they development in the app?
The chatting application is for the medical industry. It is very similar to any other chatting app, but it’s also HIPAA-compliant, meaning everything is secure. There is an audit trail of everything you have done, so that makes it a fit for the medical industry. It supports audio calling, video calling, file transfer, attachment, images, voice messages, as well as normal text messages. It also integrates with our main platform so you can chat with people in your organization. You can find them and you can limit the people you can interact with, for security reasons. There are different modes of operations. Some people will expose it to their patients and some organizations want people just within the hospital. DreamTeam was responsible for our voice integration. They were responsible for everything regarding audio and video calling. We used a 3rd party toolkit called OpenTok, and they were responsible for that part. We told them the features we needed, and they did research and developed them. They did the coding and testing only.
How did you come to work with DreamTeam Mobile?
We knew their team and liked them. We trusted their quality and they’re reasonably priced. They were local, in the U.S. A lot of outsource companies don’t have any U.S. presence and that didn’t work for me because it was important for me to be able to call somebody at any time. We trusted them to do the app and they proved to us that they could do it, so we decided to outsource the next project to them. We probably could have found cheaper, but we were looking for someone who we could trust and who we could talk to at any time of day.
How much have you invested with DreamTeam Mobile?
We’re a public company and I can’t share that information. It was a reasonable rate.
What is the status of this engagement?
I joined the company 2 ½ years ago in January 2015, and that’s when the acquisition took place. That’s when I got introduced to them for that original project. The 2nd project we gave to them was about a year later. That lasted a couple of months and then once they delivered the app, that project was completed. They did continue working with us until very recently, maybe a few months back. At that time, our company started to change and we had to shift priorities, and we didn’t have any need for them anymore for various reasons. We separated as friends. I would go back to them if needed, but right now we just don’t have a need for them anymore.
Despite some scheduling delays, the applications satisfied all project requirements. DreamTeam Mobile is highly communicative and effective at what they do, working hard to ensure they produce solutions that solve their client's underlying business challenge.