Eastgate Software JSC

Please describe your company and your position there.

Our company develops an artificial intelligence platform for Materials industry. I'm interim CEO

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

We hire Eastgate Software to build an AI-enabled platform to process a large amount of materials data to provide answers to complex questions in materials industry

How did you select Eastgate Software and what were the deciding factors?

Eastgate Software has a comprehensive knowledge and expertise to handle many aspects of the projects. Their team members are talented and can tackle tough and challenging tasks.

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

Eastgate used multiple tools to execute the project

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

We work with a team of 5 people at Eastgate

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

Eastgate team completed the project on time and on budget. They also make sure that we are happy with the product details before closing the project.

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

I was impressed with how well the team communicated with us during our engagement. They also offered a remarkable level of availability. The team is very agile and quickly formulated useful ideas. Whenever we made requests, they promptly internalized our feedback to deliver the best viable solution.

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

The combination of their technical experience, proactivity, and out-of-the-box thinking sets them apart. They are also a true thought partner, as they are always thinking for us and suggesting solutions that could optimize the platform and save us a lot of money.

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

Not really. We went through a really iterative process until the end. Even if we had misunderstandings with each other, we had a few conversations, and everything was resolved, and we were able to move forward. There were no problems at all.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the CEO of Heliosys, an IT service company.

For what projects/services did your company hire Eastgate Software?

We have two projects with one of the biggest television companies in Vietnam. They needed us to build a recommendation and analytics system for their digital platform. We hired Eastgate Software for their skills in big data, AI, and mobile app development.

What were your goals for this project?

We needed an analytics and recommendation system built into the end-client’s digital platform that serves millions of users looking to search/play videos.

How did you select this vendor?

They were recommended by a close friend who had several successful projects completed by Eastgate Software.  

Can you go into detail about the services they provided and the scope of the project?

The two projects lasted 1.5 years. Their staff helped us build the system from the ground up, including design, architecture, development, quality control and maintenance. They assisted in collecting the requirements from the end client and built a custom software based on those needs.

What was the team composition?

The team consisted of one project manager, a solution architect, a data scientist, a few web developers and a quality assurance contact.

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

We were able to successfully launch the product for our end-client. They are satisfied with the way the analytics and recommendation tool can engage millions of users. The product also attracts more traffic for their products.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Everything was very smooth; our project manager was PMP certified. They applied Scrum methodology, making communication very fast and efficient.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The quality of the work and their professional style was impressive.

Are there any areas where they can improve?

My only suggestion is to create more documents, such as a user’s manual. There is very little else they could improve on.

Please describe your company and your position there.

My company develops project-specific adaptations and integrations for city traffic control and management systems. I am the project manager.

For what projects/services did your company hire Eastgate Software?

We needed to integrate a customer’s traffic light controller fully into a type of network-wide control and management system that is used in cities around the world.

What were your goals for this project?

We needed not only the integration, but comprehensive testing of that integration so that we could obtain an official compatibility certificate from a local public authority.

How did you select this vendor?

We selected them based on a personal recommendation.

Can you go into detail about the services they provided and the scope of the project?

We started with a kickoff meeting, during which we defined several project phases. In phase 1, Eastgate Software familiarized themselves with the system, and we worked together to define the technical approach, architecture, and design.

Subsequently, they designed a prototype to prove the feasibility of their solution. Then, they implemented that solution and tested it with a high degree of automation.

What was the team composition?

Throughout the project, they provided experts that maintained permanent communication with us. The combined team was comprised of about six people, with one project leader from my company and five people from Eastgate Software. Their team included an architect/system analyst, senior- and mid-level C++ developers, and testers.

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

Their solution was critical to our customer—especially since the compatibility certificate is the basis for further business. For us, it was important to deliver good results, so we could work on future projects for that client.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We handled project management, with one technical team leader on their side. We collaborated via MS Teams, Teamwork, and Skype, and had productive daily meetings throughout the project.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their team was communicative and proactive. They gave thorough responses and developed creative solutions to difficult problems. Their implementation was professional, disciplined, and systematic, and they followed the processes outlined in the initial scope closely.

Are there any areas where they can improve?

There are some areas in which they might improve, but nothing particularly significant.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Liventus is a consulting company that works with medium and large fintech, e-commerce, and engagement firms. I’m currently an application development manager. When I started working with Eastgate Software, I was a technical lead. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Eastgate Software?

Our clients needed to create new technologies, and our in-house talent didn't fit their requirements. Since we didn’t have an experienced mobile developer, we decided to find a vendor. We looked at a freelancer website, but it was a horrible experience.

What was the scope of their involvement?

After building small mobile apps and a few pilot projects, we started creating larger mobile and backend development projects. Over the past three years, we’ve completed six or seven applications. We still do small projects. They took care of 90%-95% of the process, although we helped them with deployment and production.

One of our larger projects was native Android and iOS applications for a franchise company with about 100 stores. The apps collected customer information from a tablet and fed it into the CRM, which integrated with Salesforce. Eastgate later upgraded to a hybrid development app called Submarine. We provided the wireframes and designs and they developed the backend, created an API, and hooked it up to other systems. They've maintained the app for two years.

Another app was a 3D scanner that captured and created a heatmap of a person's foot. They developed a backend based on existing hardware, and their design team created the mockups and wireframes. Once we approved it, they added a fancier UI to the wireframe. They completed this app in May 2018, and they still do maintenance.

What is the team composition?

We originally worked with two mobile developers. When we tackled larger apps, the team grew to five developers, a QA person, and the technical lead. I communicated with the technical lead and the project manager.

How did you come to work with Eastgate Software?

We were referred to Eastgate Software, and I trusted the person who suggested them.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $55,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from October 2015 to May 2018.

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

The app for the franchise company looked great and earned excellent feedback. We had tried developing it with a freelancer, but it was horrible. Eastgate Software took many practice steps and handled everything well.

The client said the app looked professional, as if it had been developed by an agency in the United States. It worked smoothly and presented no problems. Eastgate Software helped us detect unforeseen performance issues and suggested that we upgrade the server memory. 

How did Eastgate Software perform from a project management standpoint?

In early 2016, we had some hiccups. I gave feedback to the manager and they improved quickly. From that point on, their project management was great. They sent daily reports, and we communicated using Skype. I wasn't involved with development other than user acceptance testing.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were proactive, they had experienced developers, and they kept improving.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The most challenging thing was the 12-hour time difference. When we started our day here, they finished theirs. It was difficult to communicate at the beginning.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the general manager of Ominext JSC. We are a technology company that provides IT solutions for health and medical firms in Japan.

For what projects/services did your company hire Eastgate Software?

We contracted with Eastgate Software’s AI/machine learning team to build the technology necessary for a new product.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to build an application that automatically detects, numbers, and labels every tooth from dental x-ray images.

How did you select this vendor?

A close friend of mine recommended Eastgate Software.

Can you go into detail about the services they provided and the scope of the project?

Our five-month engagement consisted largely of Eastgate Software researching and providing us with several different approaches to our problems. After selecting the most appropriate solution using AI, they worked diligently to produce a software package that exceeded our expectations.

What was the team composition?

Their team has one project manager, two technical engineers, one data scientist, and one QA technician.

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

Eastgate Software delivered a product that features greater detection precision than we initially expected. Every demonstration and presentation ran smoothly. We anticipate further collaboration on a larger project based on their work.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Their scrum master effectively managed all team members and projects. Their communication with our team was always direct and timely.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They take a very professional approach to all manners of the project.

Are there any areas where they can improve?

No, I am quite happy with their services.