Ideamine

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are an IT [information technology] services company. We develop and consult on projects for our clients. Our clients are generally small business startup companies. We execute software projects for them. We specialize in mobile-based projects. The core technologies that we use are Ruby on Rails and PHP and also iOS and Android.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I’m the vice president. I manage the technology team in the U.S. as well as the offices in India.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your goal for working with Ideamine?

We have one startup client that built a beautiful product. It’s a Software-as-a-Service product. It’s an online service that they wanted to move entirely onto the cloud. So, they came to us. 

We had worked with Ideamine in the past. They are experts in doing migrations to various cloud platforms and migrations from one hosting provider to another hosting provider. So, we brought them on board for consulting with the client. We decided to move the application onto the Amazon Web Services [AWS] Cloud. The project was targeted for three to four weeks to complete the migration and change the hosting provider. 

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their work.

They did consulting and migration work. They told us the pros and cons of using various providers. They gave us the cost to value advantage of using Amazon. We decided to go with Amazon due to their recommendations. 

They even took all the information from us about the system, how their host should operate, the solution architecture – everything. Then, they started moving the system onto AWS. When they started the migration, they kept us updated on the status of the project and how long it would take.

It was originally planned to be done in four weeks, but they were able to complete in less than three weeks. They also created a solution to expand the servers under the cloud depending on the load usage. Now, it’s an automated system that helps our client save money. When the data amount goes up, they spin out new servers to handle that load and whenever the load goes down the servers are shut down. We pay only for the up times. We pay per hour. It was a cost-effective solution that they provided.

What was your process for selecting Ideamine with which to work?

They have been our Web hosting partners because we do Web-based projects often. We needed someone to host these applications. We found them on the Internet – on a forum. We’ve been doing small projects with them and we’re happy. This migration project was slightly bigger and more critical than previous engagements.

Can you give a sense of the size of the initiative in dollar terms or a personnel work-hour figure?

It was less than $10,000 for the typical project we do with them. The Amazon project would fall between $10,000 and $50,000. We’ve given them many small projects through the years.

When was the work completed?

It was completed in early 2015.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Do you have any statistics or metrics to track improvement from the project?

Most of the time projects are completed on time and within budget. They give us a fixed quote and a fixed timeline, and they generally complete it much before the deadline they provide. I could probably say there’s a 100 percent success rate on their projects. In other terms, our costs have come down by going with their solutions.

Are you satisfied with their performance?

Our client is extremely satisfied with the solution. Another advantage is they don’t disappear after completing a project. They are present for ongoing support in the way of maintenance. They are just a call away. When there’s an issue, we just need to submit a ticket, and we get a response in less than 10 minutes.

Is there anything unique or special about Ideamine that really makes them stand out compared to other business partners?

There are several companies out there that are very small in scale. It’s not just a matter of being small but, many times, these other firms are quite unreliable. I have worked with a bunch of these companies. Sometimes, their responses are not logical or competent. Alternately, Ideamine is a company that means what they say and know what they’re doing.

What advice would you give to future clients of theirs?

Give them all the information that you have about the scope. Ideamine is a trustworthy group, so all the technical information that is available to you must be made available to them as well so that they can take the best course of action. That will help in coming up with a better solution.

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or that you might do differently?

Rather than being an operations company, they could start taking projects like we did for Amazon. They could even become Amazon certified consultants for bigger companies. Most of these companies are now moving toward hosting their applications on the cloud rather than having large mainframes within specific data centers. Cloud gives you the advantage of being seamless. I also think they could improve their grammar and English writing.