ITGix

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Marketing Manager of a custom software development company

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We're a custom software development company that provides tailored end-to-end product development and IT consulting services 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Infrastructure redesign and configuration in AWS
• Implementation of best practices for redundancy and scalability
• Integration of automated deployment approach

SOLUTION

How did you find ITGix?

Referral

Why did you select ITGix over others?

• Close to my geographic location
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost

How many teammates from ITGix were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

We collaborated with ITGix on a project to design AWS architecture according to our best practices for redundancy and scalability. This includes automation for CI/CD of the applications and infrastructure as code.

• All AWS architecture was implemented with Infrastructure as code using Terraform.
• Implemented autoscaling of ECS and RDS clusters.
• Configured Wireguard VPN for developer access to private DB clusters.
• Implemented.
• Migrated WordPress site from external hosting provider to AWS EC2. 
• Implemented CI/CD pipelines in Gitlab for application build, deploy; infrastructure deployment and change review, database migration scripts, and automated testing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• Fully automated CI/CD pipelines for a fast development cycle. 
• Infrastructure as code implemented for all AWS infrastructure resources.
• Optimized infrastructure cost to reduce overhead for non-prod environments.
• Implemented auto-scaling for all infrastructure components to scale with load.
• Migrated front-end applications from an external hosting provider to AWS.
• Implemented automated testing in CI processes.

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

Extremely responsive and available, fully transparent throughout the project. 

What was your primary form of communication with ITGix?

• In-Person Meeting
• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

ITGix's technical expertise and willingness to adapt to all the project's requirements were impressive.

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

Nothing comes to mind 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Software Development Director of Fadata Group

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Core Insurance Software vendor

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Build a k8s cluster
• Build deploy servers
• Provide maintenance and support in SRE/DevOps

SOLUTION

How did you find ITGix?

Referral

Why did you select ITGix over others?

• High ratings
• Close to my geographic location
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me

How many teammates from ITGix were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

IT Gix were tasked to support the Fadata internal product application development infrastructure and partially CI/CD. They have delivered k8s cluster with documentation and handover, plus application deploy servers setup. Afterwards they've continued to support us from an INCM perspective. As part of this they have setup a monitoring system in place.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Stable k8s cluster in place with limited amount of outages. The cluster started with a single node before it got expanded with a second. All our internal development processes are now assosiated with the cluster. 

Working and stable deployment servers are in place and working.

Monitoring in place and used.

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

We obviously had very small spoce of the project. Between 1-2 persons were assigned to us. The scope was clear and the management happened on a technical level. There were no significant delays or problems. The benefit of working with ITGix is that they have knowledgeable experts in the background and even if the project would struggle anyone with a solid experience who isn't assigned to the project would jump in to support and remove the hurdle. 

What was your primary form of communication with ITGix?

• In-Person Meeting
• Virtual Meeting

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

We were impressed with their flexibility, expertise, and understanding of our business needs. Conversations were absolutely transperent in terms of budget allocation, payments and deadlines. 

Their CEO Kamen engages when necessary. Kamen has a solid technical and engineering track so he speaks the same language as both the engineering staff on the client side but also the management.

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

At this stage I see nothing in particular. Probably we've had a slightly slower start with one of the engineers who was a bit more on the junior side compared to what we've expected but he has managed to catch up quite quickly and was actively supported in the background.

So overall nothing major to recomend.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CTO of Sport Ventures Holdings Inc.

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Canada’s Premiere Online Sportsbook and Casino

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• DevOps

SOLUTION

How did you find ITGix?

Other

Why did you select ITGix over others?

Company values aligned

How many teammates from ITGix were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

ITGix provided managed DevOps services.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• Faster Time to Market (TTM): Reduced deployment times and faster release cycles, leading to quicker product iterations and improved responsiveness to market demands.
• Improved Deployment Frequency: Increased frequency of successful deployments, indicating a streamlined and efficient release process, often measured in terms of deployments per week or month.
• Enhanced System Stability and Reliability: Lowered incidents of system failures and downtimes, showcasing improved system stability and reliability, measured through reduced Mean Time To Recovery (MTTR) and higher uptime.
• Optimized Resource Utilization: Efficient use of infrastructure and resources, resulting in cost savings and improved return on investment (ROI), demonstrated through reduced infrastructure costs and improved resource efficiency.
• Enhanced Collaboration and Communication: Improved cross-functional collaboration and communication between development and operations teams, leading to higher efficiency and faster issue resolution, often measured through enhanced team satisfaction and reduced incident resolution time.
• Increased Automation Levels: Higher levels of automation in development, testing, and deployment processes, resulting in reduced manual intervention and error rates, measured through the percentage of tasks automated and error reduction metrics.
• Improved Quality and Customer Satisfaction: Higher software quality, reduced defects, and increased customer satisfaction, as evidenced by improved Net Promoter Score (NPS) or customer feedback on product performance and usability.
• Cost Savings and Cost Efficiency: Demonstrable cost reductions in IT operations, infrastructure, and maintenance costs, showcasing financial benefits and cost-efficiency achieved through outsourcing, often measured through a comparison of pre- and post-outsourcing costs.
• Enhanced Security and Compliance: Improved security posture and compliance adherence, demonstrated through reduced security incidents, improved compliance audit results, and adherence to industry standards and regulations.
• Metrics-Driven Decision Making: Utilization of relevant metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) for informed decision-making and continuous improvement, leading to data-driven optimizations in the DevOps processes and practices.

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

ITGix provided a collaborative and efficient approach to our requirements. Always meeting all of the projected deliverables.

What was your primary form of communication with ITGix?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Communication is the key to delivering any remote services, and they excelled in this, and many other key areas.

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

I believe excelled in all areas.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CEO of proxeedo IT Solutions GmbH

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

proxeedo is providing nearshoring IT Services with a strong focus on Data Engineering, Data Science, DevOps and Full-Stack development.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• sustainable partnership
• highly qualified and reliable developers
• cost-reducing (compared to onsite colleagues)

SOLUTION

How did you find ITGix?

Online Search

Why did you select ITGix over others?

• Close to my geographic location
• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from ITGix were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

There are a lot of different requirements in our clients environment distributed on several projects. Part of all projects was e. g. cloud development (GCP), implementing of microservices, development of algorithms and machine learning models, implementation of real-time data pipelines and many more. ITGix has provided the right candidates based on the clients requirements.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

stabilizing the team, building up a reliable and trustworthy partnership

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

All my requirements are fulfilled directly and on time. ITGix is supportive and reachable. In case of any new requirement, adjustment or concern I can directly reach out to ITGix to find the best possible solution for me and our common clients. Even during smaller crisis (e. g. layoffs due to budget cuts) our relationship is still full of respect and ITGix is flexible to give a fair response and a way to deal with any challenge. 

In terms of project organization within the clients projects, all colleagues/developers/engineers are supportive and helping each other to keep the quality and therefor the client satisfation high.

What was your primary form of communication with ITGix?

Virtual Meeting

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

I really appreciate, our collaboration is characterized by trust, reliability, and transparency. It is always a pleasure to meet with the guys to speak and think over a wide variety of topics. Since we share a common vision and same values, we can align our strategy to fulfill our common clients needs and requirements. We can use our synergies to keep our both companies growing. 

Even if ITGix is the bigger company, we are always taken serious. The management of ITGix is communicative and reliable and they always strive to find a quick solution in the sense of me and/or our common client. The management (and of course the guys within the projects) have a broad technical and professional knowledge and support me and my client in finding the right people for our projects.

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

I'm really satisfied and happy with the current situation. Of course, I want to scale up the team size, but this is depending on the project situation.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of technology for EMEA for a financial research firm.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with ITGix?

We needed help migrating our data center from on-premise infrastructure to AWS.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our team had intimate knowledge of our products and their dependencies. ITGix supplemented that knowledge with experience in working with cloud infrastructure, DevOps, and scripting and deploying environments. The team worked alongside our internal code excellence team to carry out the migration. They also left a robust suite of documentation that our team will run from now on.

What is the team composition?

We worked with four people: a senior member who led the team, two mid-level engineers, and a junior engineer.

How did you come to work with ITGix?

A colleague introduced us to ITGix. The team’s engagement, enthusiasm, and expertise impressed from the get-go. We invited them to visit us on-site and give a presentation based on what our needs were. ITGix seemed to know exactly what to bring to our engagement, which we valued.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about €200,000 (approximately $224,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from September 2018–April 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

ITGix migrated our platforms on budget and almost on time. Their team played a massive part in the project’s success. We feel confident going forward with the new systems using their documentation.

How did ITGix perform from a project management standpoint?

Despite working almost entirely remotely, ITGix integrated with our existing team superbly well, which was essential to the final delivery. Their team adjusted to our ideal methodologies and work approaches with ease.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The team came up with creative solutions to each problem that arose. ITGix also was highly productive, finishing an incredible volume of work in a short time.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I can’t think of anything. ITGix did everything we asked of them.

Any advice for potential customers?

Bring ITGix on site to meet your team and help build those relationships before the project starts. When you can put your trust in ITGix, it improves the productivity of a remote working relationship.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the CEO of a software development company. We deliver enterprise platforms to big companies in the insurance, banking, and airline industries.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire ITGix?

The project we engaged with ITGix was a complex migration from on-premise servers to the cloud (both AWS and private cloud). Additionally, we needed to containerize everything using Docker and Kubernetes.

What were your goals for this project?

The main goal was to make the migration in a DevOps manner so that the provisioning of all systems and stacks were fully automated.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We had received strong recommendations for ITGix, particularly for their founders. We knew that they had previous experience with a project similar to ours. After receiving their rate card, they became the most logical choice.

Describe the project in detail.

ITGix came up with a migration plan and proposed the technologies (e.g., Ansible for automation) and the architecture of the infrastructure/cloud/containers. We followed the plan and migrated environment after environment. Before each release, ITGix did security and scalability testing to verify the results.

What was the team composition?

They assigned one architect, two DevOps specialists, and a QA resource.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The project was executed on time and within budget. All the work was done in a very professional manner, and we had a very smooth migration thanks to their previous experience. Furthermore, ITGix provided many innovative solutions during the process that we implemented, and now our environments are highly automated, which decreases our support costs.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Our development team worked very closely with the ITGix DevOps team.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

What amazed me the most was their in-depth knowledge of cloud systems and DevOps tools. It’s rare to meet people with extensive experience in the most advanced tools in the current cloud world.

Are there any areas for improvement?                     

I can't think of any.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of the software development team for a mobile payments company. We work with app stores worldwide. We’re also a merchant in the telecom area, acting as a technical enabler for customers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with ITGix?

Our challenge was mainly in the area of DevOps. We have an internal team, but we needed help with tasks we couldn’t handle alone due to an overwhelming workload.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Within the last month, ITGix has specifically been working on a migration initiative. We’d been working with CFEngine for many years, and ITGix was moving our stuff over to Ansible. This has been one of our major projects. Aside from that, we’ve worked on many migrations from existing systems, including HTTP servers. They’ve also made an upgrade to the most recent Apache version for us.

What is the team composition?

We have one main contact on their team, Mihail (CTO and Co-Founder, ITGix), along with one other person. Aside from them, we have at least two full-time equivalents on ITGix’s side, who are handled by Mihail. I’d refer to Mihail as our lead developer, and not so much a project manager.

How did you come to work with ITGix?

I wasn’t specifically involved in selecting them, but I know that, historically, we’d been working with another Bulgarian company that Mihail was a former member of. We still had good relations with that company, so it was natural to continue the collaboration in the DevOps and admin field with ITGix.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $250,000–$500,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working with ITGix since November 2016.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

ITGix’s contribution has enabled us to actively compete with companies that were outsourcing, without having to add new internal employees. They’re helping us deliver projects on time, which we wouldn’t otherwise be able to do. We’re satisfied with their quality of work.

How did ITGix perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve performed very well from a communication standpoint, and documentation has improved over the last year. It wasn’t top-notch from the beginning, but we’ve come to a point where we’re happy with that as well. We work in Confluence and communicate daily.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’ve had a lot of reliable partners, but something that really sticks out to me is they feel like a real part of the team. They’ve been coming to our Christmas parties in Germany, and we consider them colleagues. There’s a certain camaraderie on a personal level, aside from the professionalism.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. nothing sticks out to me.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Clients shouldn’t think of ITGix as a foreign, anonymous entity being hired, but rather try to accept them as part of the team. They’ll get the most out of the partnership this way.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of development for a shoe company. I manage various IT, HR, and development projects.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with ITGix?

We needed someone to manage our backend in terms of server maintenance and backups.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

ITGix maintains our servers and keeps them up to date. They also run security diagnostics and our disaster recovery sites. They use Oracle Database and WebLogic, with a multitude of different virtual server environments, as well. Our monitoring systems are also handled by their team.

What is the team composition?

There’s a generic help email we can message whenever we need assistance.

How did you come to work with ITGix?

They were recommended. We’d worked with a few other providers who weren’t good, but ITGix seemed clean and professional, so we hired them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve worked together since October 2015.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We recently had a disaster on one of our cloud platforms, and we were able to resume service using ITGix’s disaster recovery site. They’re a solid company that our employees enjoy interacting with.

How did ITGix perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re responsive and timely. Because of the nature of the work, we share a large amount of documentation, and they keep it organized and accessible. We communicate via email.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They work quickly and complete assignments properly.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Have a conversation with them about what you want. They’re down to earth and highly skilled, so they’ll be able to help you out.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Lead Cloud Architect of ACTICO GmbH

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Software Solutions for Compliance, Credit Risk & Decision Management

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Support AWS Cloud Operations
• DevOps Platform with full automation

SOLUTION

How did you find ITGix?

Referral

Why did you select ITGix over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me

How many teammates from ITGix were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

ITGix supports AWS Cloud Operations in daily tasks as well as helping to setup DevOps Platform with CICD for full automation of our cloud based product offering.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• Manual efforts for operating our cloud based product offerings were highly reduced.
• Standardization led to more stable operations.
• Legacy systems were migrated to new operating models.

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

Milestones were mostly delivered in time.

What was your primary form of communication with ITGix?

Virtual Meeting

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

The whole team shows great commitment.

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

No.