gart

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CEO & Founder of an information technology company

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

SaaS B2B in Cybersecurity helping vCISOs scale their capability

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire gart to accomplish?

• Deploy an nodejs/react application to AWS
• Use Gitlab CI for efficienct deployment
• Use terraform for repeatable management

SOLUTION

How did you find gart?

upwork

Why did you select gart over others?

• High ratings
• Good value for cost

How many teammates from gart were assigned to this project?

1 Employee

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

The application was developed by the customer using NodeJS and PostGRESQL, with code management handled through GitLab. Our search focused on finding assistance in creating a robust CI/CD pipeline. This pipeline should enable seamless updates of the latest code across different environments, run tests, and perform necessary database updates. 

The chosen vendor should have experience in integrating security tasks into the CI process, such as conducting dependency checks and application scans. Moreover, experience in implementing application monitoring solutions was considered desirable. Once the pipeline is established, we were also interested in receiving basic support for its maintenance.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

The project has reached the stage of engaging in discussions and conducting demos with the first customer, indicating that the development process has advanced to a significant milestone. Plan to finalize the deal with the first customer by the end of July. Gart's ideas for secure deployment, including the use of Terraform to automate password rotation, were well received. Thorough documentation and clear diagrams were provided.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

The Gart team was overall great to work with. There was a slight ramp-up period, particularly in terms of communication, but after joining our stand-up meetings a few times, the teams really gelled together! There was no micromanagement.

What was your primary form of communication with gart?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

The Gart setup is very good, but even with my knowledge of AWS, I realized how complex even simple deployments can be. My team would not know how to troubleshoot it. gart had some really good ideas for secure deployment, specifically using Terraform to override .env passwords with rotated passwords automatically.

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

The documentation was very thorough, and the diagrams were very good. A suggestion would be to write it from the perspective of someone who is not familiar with the environment, rather than documenting each feature. It is difficult to explain without a walkthrough. This is not a criticism of Gart's skill; they documented everything correctly and very well. However, it might be helpful to have a pair of non-senior engineers review the documentation to see if they can understand the environment from it. Additionally, videos may be a highly recommended idea.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Founder & CEO of SoundCampaign

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Platform that allows artists and musicians to reach Spotify curators and Tiktok creators around the globe

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire gart to accomplish?

• We had an infrastructure hosted on AWS with services hosted on VMs. We wanted to switch to containers, reduce infrastructure costs and improve our development and release processes.

SOLUTION

How did you find gart?

Online Search

Why did you select gart over others?

High ratings

What was the size of gart’s team?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

The primary objective of the project was to upgrade the product infrastructure to a more advanced level. Our primary focus was on utilizing containers and serverless technology while eliminating the need for VMs. Additionally, we aimed to establish a uniform and dynamic environment for development and testing purposes. One of our key business goals was to expedite the time-to-market process while preventing downtime during new version releases.

I am pleased to announce that our team successfully accomplished all of our objectives. We migrated our compute operations from VMs to containers running on AWS Fargate and implemented a fully automated CI/CD pipeline using GitHub Actions. As a result, we have been able to streamline our development and testing processes, resulting in increased efficiency and reduced downtime during product releases.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Time and budget - we had a fixed price and deadline for migration

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

The team exhibited a high degree of autonomy, eliminating the need for additional management oversight. Weekly meetings were held to share status updates, plans, and any potential obstacles, and all tasks and activities were recorded and tracked in Jira. The project was completed on schedule, meeting all objectives.

In addition, we continue to collaborate with the infrastructure support team, which includes Gart’s engineer. The engineer actively participates in daily meetings and provides weekly detailed reports regarding completed, ongoing, and planned activities. This approach has helped ensure that our infrastructure remains stable and reliable, allowing us to focus on delivering high-quality products and services to our customers.

What was your primary form of communication with gart?

Email or Messaging App

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

They completed the project on time and within the planned budget. Switching to the new infrastructure was even more accessible and seamless than we expected.

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

Everything was great, and we are happy about this collaboration and will continue working with a team.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Co-partner in Software Development company

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire gart?

We had an infrastructure hosted on-premise. There were applications developed internally as far as some 3rd-party software. Our company decided to move to Azure in order to increase stability and support fast growth.

SOLUTION

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

One of our partners previously worked with gart and recommended them as a team of professionals. We talked to them and received a clear plan and proposal for our case.

Describe the project in detail and walk through their service package.

We had 30+ applications hosted on-premise. Applications were built using Java, .Net, and Javascript tech stack. Some of them are hosted on Linux and some of them are on Windows servers. We have decided to move to Azure and reuse the serverless stack as much as possible. We have been looking for a partner who has strong Azure experience and experience in migration projects. We also required architecture and consultancy in Azure to set up a secure and scalable landscape.

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

Gart has provided an Azure Architect and 3 DevOps engineers for the migration. They also had a PM who lead the project and managed all the communication.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They finished migration according to schedule, made automation for infrastructure provisioning, and set up governance for new infrastructure. They continue to support us with Azure.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We were working using agile, having daily stand-up meetings and weekly demo/review sessions. The team was clear in communication and open to receiving feedback.

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

They are professional and have a very good technical experience

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

Everything is good

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CEO & Co-Founder of a venture backed cyber security startup.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire gart?

We were looking for additional DevOps support for our infra needs.

SOLUTION

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

We searched online and shortlisted a few vendors. Gart came up strongly during the interviews with their experiences and prompt responses.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

They helped with setting up new infra environments, and helped with some infra outage recoveries.

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

we had a project manager, and a AWS expert consultant supporting us.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The Gart's team were able to support all our requirements, and were able to help us recover from a serious outage.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We had daily stand-ups during the outage. The team was highly approachable.

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

We were amazed by their prompt turnaround and persistency in fixing things!

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

Not much that we can think of.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We run a startup in health tech domain. I'm responsible for IT part of it

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire gart?

Gart was hired to perform initial consultancy of DevOps part of the project

SOLUTION

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

I had previous experience with company leads which was very successful and I knew their level of proficiency

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

The project had single consultancy stage. As an input there were overall expected functional map. Expected result was to provide best options and target architecture of the cloud-based infrastructure

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

Two lead engineers

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The result was exactly as I expected: analysis, documentation, preferred technology stack etc

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Regular communication, highly professional expectation management

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

Fine resource allocation, proper resource usage. It's vey good when vendor speaks "your language" and know what to offer and to deliver

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

I believe these guys should grow up via expanding resources. All things I've seen were very good.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the Engineering Lead of a social, informational, and virtual training platform in sports betting.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire gart?

Assistance on CI/CD Jenkins implementation.

SOLUTION

How did you select gart and what were the deciding factors?

They were recommended by a recruitment agency we've successfully collaborated with before.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

Duplicate existing deployment jobs to new environments and port certain scripts to an alternate programming language.

Describe the recruitment process in detail.

Task/requirements were well defined pre our collaboration commence.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Job duplication was completed successfully.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Simple online chat proved to be sufficient. No micromanagement.

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

The team's task-focused deliveries, regardless of work-hour scope, were impressive.

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

Track/log engagement time frames with description.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

CEO of S-Cube 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire gart?

Efficient parallelisation and job orchestration on Azure

SOLUTION

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

We gave the vendor a trial assessment. 

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

Vendor worked with us containerise our product and run it on a Nomad-based cluster. Final deliverable was in the form of docker images.

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

One senior developer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The solution is in use in production. 

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Highly effective - we worked as one team.

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

We were amazed by their ability to adapt to our evolving needs. They collaborate and present solutions very well.

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

No - the work met and in many ways exceeded expectation levels.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Haensel AMS is a data analytics boutique, mainly active in the ecommerce space.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Our data pipeline is already well tailored to AWS and in this project we extended two pipelines to GCP and Azure.

SOLUTION

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

Their high experience and we got in contact via recommendation.

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

They developed and implemented the respective tech stack in the cloud.

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

2

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We are very happy with the setup quality and speed!

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

mainly basecamp, email and video call - very good

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

They had fast reaction times.

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

no