Equinox IS

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO of Conservation Diver, a coral reef research, protection, and restoration training and certifications organization

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

We had a database made for us in 2015 using Ruby on Rails, that firm dissolved and left us with a product that was unusable. after trying several other freelancers, we hired equinox to transfer that database into Java, create a more useful/friendly UI, recover 14 years worth of back data, and create and excel export function with various reports.

How did you select Equinox IS and what were the deciding factors?

After two other freelancers we hired fell short (costing us more than $2,000 USD and 8 months of time) we started to lose hope.

In an act of desperation, I posted to a marine biology group on facebook concerning the problems we were having and was contacted by Daniel P. He said he could help, and after talking with him on the phone I realized he was perfect for the job.

He put my mind at ease, understood what the other freelancers did not, realized our goals, and got us to them.

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

We started with a Ruby on Rails database that we recovered after the first firm dissolved, which was hosted on Heroku and unusable. Equinox did the following to get us where we needed to be:

1. Restrcuture Heroku account to be applicable for our needs
2. Convert the entire database app/UI to Java
3. Rebuild the app on Heroku
4. Modify data entry and various meta-data parameters to be functional
5. Do a Database bump from the old database, merge all existing data into the new app
6. Create several excel export report functions so that we can easily view and share data visualizations
7. Advise us on how to proceed next

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

1, Daniel P.

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

The project was completed to our specifications in a reasonable amount of time. We now have a functioning database for our 14 years of ecological monitoring surveys that is usable to our teams on the ground.

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

Daniel was very direct with questions, replied to Emails quickly, was always willing to have a call to ensure understanding, and did they background research necessary to understand our unique underwater survey system.

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

easy to work with, fast results, very professiional, did everything they said they could, and more.

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

no, they did a great job. I will be using them again

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a Domain Lead for the Big Data and the Data Warehouse team at Hutchison Drei Austria GmbH. I oversee operations in Austria.

For what projects/services did your company hire Equinox IS?

Big Data Analytics and Pipelines

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to replace the legacy vendor solution with a new open-source one for churn. To build a proof of concept for the network use case.

How did you select this vendor?

We met them through an agency (FRT).

Describe the project in detail.

To help with Big Data Analytics, we had several initiatives. While going through an Agile transformation we identified several new Big Data related use cases. Equinox was involved in the churn open-source replacement and the network planning UCs.

What was the team composition?

We had data engineers and data scientists working with us.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Objectives were met.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Good communication. Working on-site helped while we also had good communication remotely. We used Jira as a project management tool.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Knowledge. They had good ideas and initiatives.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Call our roadblocks sooner.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a Product Owner at a mobile-only neobank headquartered in Sydney. I am responsible for the product feature development strategy and innovation. Our company has about 50 employees and we have offices in London and Sydney, serving customers mainly in Australia.

For what projects/services did your company hire Equinox IS?

We hired Equinox to help out with building our core transaction processing infrastructure and later to work on various data related projects.

What were your goals for this project?

Achieve core functionality, support operational, financial activities.

How did you select this vendor?

We were introduced to Equinox through an agent.

Describe the project in detail.

Initially they were working on the core transaction processing and then on they were tasked to look after data related projects. This included the integration of a vendor’s fraud prevention system; aggregation of financial data and report generation on top of it; overseeing marketing technology; forming the basics of back-office, work on reconciliation processes and integration and to define the data strategy.

What was the team composition?

A lead engineer, also acting as a project manager, two senior software engineers, a business analyst and a tester.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

In all project areas functionality was successfully built, from scratch, and released to production. This enabled us to have fraud prevention, financial report generation and automated reconciliation in the back office.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We followed Agile practices which made communication effective, also they were good understanding requirements on a business level.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their experience and skills, they also knew how to find a solution to a problem.

Are there any areas for improvement?

They did achieve and deliver a lot, though sometimes this wasn't communicated enough, visibility could be improved.