Knoldus Inc.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a digital marketing company. We connect the millions of users in our segmented communities with brand partners. My role is Director of IT.

For what projects/services did your company hire Knoldus Inc., and what were your goals?

We needed to rebuild our proprietary software from the ground up. A system that can manage our various communities. Our staff needed an admin where they could launch and run a number of campaigns for each community.

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

We interviewed a number of different options from doing the build in-house to outsourcing. This one made the most sense based on timelines & cost.

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

We had a lengthy kick-off process to identify exactly what our needs were. Then we collaborated with the Knoldus team to map out a strategy for how to accomplish this. And we've been working together for about a year and a half now to bring this project into the world.

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

The team has changed many times since the beginning, but we've typically had:

• a SCRUM master
• an on-site tech lead
• 2-3 backend developers
• 2-3 frontend developers
• devops
• testing

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

We're still in the process of migrating so it's a little early to look at metrics but our staff have noticed significant improvements in the amount of time it takes for them to launch a campaign. They also have significantly more control to customize the campaign to their specific needs.

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

We have daily SCRUM meetings, we use the full Atlassian suite for organizing the project and we have a Google Chat room.

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

Their ability to scale up and down based on specific project requirements is impressive.

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

Better analysis ahead of time so we don't discover limitations late into development. More attention by on-site tech lead to our specific needs. Better communication of potential issues / delays.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of Decooda International. We are a text analytics company focusing on customer experience, detections, and journey mapping. The core technology is a text analytics engine that identifies topics in unstructured data. As the CTO, I innovate new and improved technologies.

What challenge were you trying to address with Knoldus Inc.?

We started our business about 11 years ago. As a text analytics engine, text analysis is a fairly slow processing endeavor. We needed to scale our text analytics processing. 

At that time, we used a programming language called Scala. The language was relatively new, and there weren't that many developers that knew Scala. However, Scala is a very scalable programming language, and I knew that I needed to use it for the volume of unstructured data we were going to analyze. I came across Knoldus Inc., who had domain expertise in Scala. We were looking for a distributed computing environment that would handle text analytics, and there wasn't anything on the market. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had to design our own distributed computing environment, so I came up with a reference architecture based on distributed computing methodologies. I hired Knoldus Inc. to implement my vision of this distributed computing environment in Scala.

What is the team composition?

At that time, we had between 5–8 people at any given time. We worked with QAs, levels 1–3 developers, and an architect.

How did you come to work with Knoldus Inc.?

As I was looking for Scala developers in the US, someone reached out to me who said they had offshore Scala development expertise. I interviewed them and told them what I was looking for. Their skill set was a perfect match for what I was doing. The organization’s CEO is a brilliant architect, and he understood exactly what I was trying to do. We started prototyping the vision of the distributed computing architecture. 

How much have you invested with them?

I don’t have the exact numbers, but I believe that we’ve spent at least half a million dollars.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together around 2011–2012. I continue working with Knoldus Inc. on spot projects here and there. We took a bit of our development in-house once they finished the project.

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

On a scale of one to 10, their responsiveness and support deserve an eight. I’d give them a nine for architecture and a 10 for customer service and domain knowledge.

How did Knoldus Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

Knoldus Inc. does excellent in project management. We had a dedicated team that blended themselves as if they were part of the company. We initially communicated via HipChat, and then we migrated to Slack. We had daily conference call stand-ups.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Knoldus Inc. is a pretty top-notch organization with a very dedicated group of people. Their knowledge is great, and they did all that they could. I was pretty happy with their performance. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don't think there's anything they could have done better. Even though it wasn’t essential, we would have liked to have more frequent on-site visitations. However, that was probably not possible because the team was very large. We also had a budget, so it was better that I went and visited them. I spent a few months over in their facility, working hand-in-hand with the team that was assigned to me.  

Any advice for potential customers?

Have very clear specifications initially so that they can architect your product properly upfront. Then, have face-to-face visitation where needed throughout the project to meet with the team. If your project is going on for a year, maybe you want to try to meet with the team once or twice a year. What I noticed is that when I met with the team, it encouraged the team greatly. They were very happy to have our presence in their facilities working hand-in-hand with us.

As an outsourced company, they can get disconnected from the business and not necessarily know exactly what you're trying to do or what your vision is. By working with them for a period of time, they got to see my vision and make decisions without having to wait for my directions. Getting them to buy into your vision from a team perspective is probably a very good investment. That is best done with a face-to-face visit with the team.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the Director- Software Development for platform services based out of India. We build SaaS services in InsureTech space .

For what projects/services did your company hire Knoldus Inc.?

We needed Scala development engineers to augment our team to build future-ready reactive microservices.

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

We got to know about them by going through there blogs and presence on social media. It was enlightening to know they had team who has extensive experience in working on similar tech stack as ours - Scala, Spark, AWS etc.

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

As a starting point - They provided 3 engineers who helped us add new features to our product. At times - we had to switch context on other priorities and best part of there team was adaptability. We grew this team to 5 engineers to add capacity for us to deliver more.

Describe the recruitment process in detail.

As a practise , we identify the requirements (mainly the tech stack) required to deliver on business orders. We create detailed job description and share the same with our partners. Once we receive relevant people then we make them go through screening process before on-boarding - Tech discussion, Live-coding, Individual aspirations etc.

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

I would fully credit their support in terms of technical acumen , adaptability and sense of belonging/ownership on task assigned. We never felt that they were not part of our team and it also helped us in our goal of team-work.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Majority of time it was remote but they were always willing to join for in-person meetings , if required. We used to interact on zoom/slack to resolve any architectural/domain queries. Tracked the work progress with help of creating tickets on Jira. The completion commitment used to be two week sprint cycle.

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

They provide high caliber developers at a very cost effective price point. As company , they make sure their employees are well equipped with Infra needs and other requirements to get productive from day -1.

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

1. Better Account Management.
2. Technical skills understanding for operations team to expedite in finding right resources.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am one of the founders and the CTO of Carbyne. We provide public safety systems for the government, emergency centers, and first responders.

What challenge were you trying to address with Knoldus Inc.?

We were trying to scale our organization in a cost-effective and agile manner with the specific technologies we use. At the core, our stack comprised of Scala and Akka which is a type safe language and a platform which is based on Akka Actors.

There isn’t a lot of expertise in the Scala and Akka domains, and we were looking for a partner skilled in these technologies.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Knoldus Inc. provides us with developers who are fluent in Scala and Akka, the best practices of software development, microservices development, and cloud development.

We provide emergency communication platforms to things like first responders, states, local governments in the States, Europe, and Asia. When someone is making a 911 call, up until this point, in the most critical situation they need to verbally describe, where they are, what is going on, why they are calling, and what the emergency is.

On the other side, during this critical time, the call taker needs to understand exactly what is going on, what the person’s location is, and if and what kind of help to dispatch to the location. We are changing all of that using all of the capabilities of a mobile device.

We are partnering with Google and Apple, and during the 911 call, accessing the device location, video and images from the camera, drone data, and all available information. Then we deliver all of that information to their system.

Since the call taker gets all of that information to their PC using our platform, they then deliver that information to the emergency chain of first responders. It allows for more efficient handling of the event, cutting down dispatch times.

The main features to enable this platform are microservices that the Knoldus Inc. team is helping our team develop. Part of this is IoT based communication over legacy serial interfaces in order to be able to achieve some of these capabilities.

Additional things are the menu of our API both on the services side and on the desktop application side. They are helping develop key features for the platform like the ability to deliver snapshots, images, and transcriptions to the customers.  

What is the team composition?

We work with around 10 developers from their team. At any single point in time, there are no more than four developers from their team distributed among our teams.

We had some people that left, and they provided people to replace them. We work with one or two people that are helping to manage the team. It feels like they are part of our team. 

How did you come to work with Knoldus Inc.?

We were looking for a partner for Lightbend which is the company that is developing Akka and Scala, and Knoldus is one of their partners. We found them on their site and contacted them and the rest is history.

How much have you invested in them?

We have invested around $1 million dollars.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing engagement began in May 2018.

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

We measure the success of the project through the completion of tasks. We are working in an agile methodology and have sprints that are two weeks long. For every sprint, there is a goal, and every developer is assigned to a task.

At first, they would dedicate a team of four or five developers to work on the project, but that didn't work well. We found that it works better for us if we take the team and separate the developers into our own core teams. We separated the Knoldus developers between those teams so that we would have one or two developers between each team.

So far, their accomplishments are very good, and they are making 90% of the sprint scope. That is how we are tracking the progress and it has worked very well for us.

How did Knoldus Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

Knoldus Inc. performs very well. They came in with very good knowledge of the basics of computer science and writing scalable applications, so we don’t have to teach them a lot. It is totally different than many other companies we have worked with before, the Knoldus Inc. team is coming pre-trained. It saves us a lot of time, and they are very strict in working according to the industry best practices.

We use Jira as a project management tool as well as Confluence to distribute all the tasks and our documentation. We communicate via Slack, WhatsApp, phone calls, or meetings in Google Meet. We also use git to share source code.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Knoldus Inc. is equipped with the best standards and practices. When they joined our team, they already knew both basic and advanced information regarding computer science and agile work methodologies

They understand the mission and the goal and are dedicated to achieving them. We have not had any issues in achieving goals.

Are there any areas they could improve?

One area I would say they can improve in is their attrition. Developers have left from time to time from their team, they have done everything they can to replace those team leads as fast as possible. They even went an extra step and added an additional developer without any additional cost from their side in case some developers are missing or have had to leave, which we appreciated.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

In terms of managing the development team, have the developers distributed between the different teams. That worked well for me after doing some A/B testing.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the technical lead for a project at Singapore Exchange Ltd. The project is an over-the-counter trading platform. We offer facilities for people to trade over-the-counter.

What challenge were you trying to address with Knoldus Inc.?

The product was built by a previous vendor. We needed ongoing resources specializing in Java and Scala to take over the maintenance and redevelopment of the platform.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We have a legacy codebase that is quite monolithic. It’s more than a standalone product. We wanted to add new features and integrate with external systems and existing systems within the exchange. That’s been a challenge with the product. They want to adopt new technologies and then integrate that product into the existing platform. As we redevelop that platform, we want to move away from Scala into a more mix of languages with Java.

What is the team composition?

We’re working with four people, one team lead, and three developers. They work collaboratively with our team. 

How did you come to work with Knoldus Inc.?

We found them in a Google search for Scala developers. I also saw them on YouTube because they put up tutorials. From there, they helped us source developers specializing in Scala and Java. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in November 2019, and the work is ongoing.

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

They integrated well with the team. They try to operate in an agile manner using sprints. It’s a difficult project because the existing codebase is quite unwieldy. I’m hoping once we move away from that and we can migrate some of the major features out of that codebase, it will be a lot easier to develop and add new features. 

How did Knoldus Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

We had a period where everyone was working remotely for about three months. Then we progressively went back to the office. We asked special permission for them to be in the office permanently, and that was granted. 

Now, we have face-to-face communication. Everything is done on Webex. We have daily scrum standups. Even though the team mostly works together in-person, we do calls for other teammates that are still remote. We use Jira, and we have a dedicated project manager who runs the sprints.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I was impressed with the way they fit in with the rest of the team. There haven’t been any integration issues whatsoever. They’ve been very cooperative and easy to get along with. They fit very well in the team.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I explained at the start that strategically our direction was to move away from Scala into Java, and they all agreed. I had to take a bit of reluctance amongst them to work on Scala codebases, which I can understand. I see that in some of my existing team as well.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I was impressed with their experience and knowledge of Scala. They could offer quite a bit and suggest different ways to improve the way we were doing things.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the lead architect for a medical supply store, but I also perform the roles of technical product owner and technical lead.

I’m the lead architect for a medical supply store, but I also perform the roles of technical product owner and technical lead. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Knoldus Inc.?

We needed a partner skilled in reactive stacks, specifically in applying CQRS and event sourcing pattern to build microservices in asynchronous actor-based development.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Knoldus Inc. collaborates on a variety of projects, including translating the architecture vision to design and defining the APIs. They ensure that our microservices are clean, and they build out our continuous integration and continuous delivery (CICD) pipeline. Our frontend team works closely with them on a short service level agreement.

Beyond those services, they also incrementally build various releases for our product and work on about 13 different microservices. They deploy and teach us how to do container building and how to orchestrate the containers. For the DevOps side, they manage the entire component. We share a backlog and sprint schedule, which they use to take on tasks.

What is the team composition? 

They have about 10 people. There isn’t a project manager, just tech leads.

How did you come to work with Knoldus Inc.?

I’d worked with them before and knew they had expertise in building asynchronous reactive microservices. We compared them against two other companies, but Knoldus Inc. was the best equipped, so we hired them.

How much have you invested with them?

We've spent under $1 million. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We partnered in May 2018, and the work is ongoing. 

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

For nearly every sprint demo, their code quality is above 90%. When it isn’t, they quickly rectify any deficiencies or flaws.

How did Knoldus Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re incredibly responsive, getting back to us within 5–10 minutes of sending a message. They close bugs within a few days and respond almost immediately on Slack. We interact directly with the team, using Jira, Google Hangouts, appear.in, and Slack. We hold daily standups that they often participate in.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have an amazing technical ability in the reactive stack and deep knowledge of functional development. They pick up new technologies quickly, such as graph databases and Prometheus, which we required them to use.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They struggled to create runbooks in understandable language, but the CEO helped fix that.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Include the entire team in the business requirements review. It will help them understand your goals, which will improve the partnership.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the IT advisor for a consulting agency. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Knoldus Inc.?

We needed a partner to provide microservices, specifically managing our new data setup. The main project was to develop an enterprise streaming platform.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Knoldus Inc. reviewed our technical problems and helped incubate an offshore team. They use various technologies (e.g. Confluence, Kafka, Cassandra, Lightbend stack) to help with data streaming from corporate enterprise systems to new types of databases like object storage. They write code to move data to different places and allow it to be consumed by various apps.

What is the team composition? 

We’ve worked with up to 25 people, mostly developers.

How did you come to work with Knoldus Inc.?

We’ve known them for a long time and kept in touch. When this project popped up, I knew they’d be a great fit.

What is the status of this engagement?

We partnered in January 2017, and the work is ongoing. 

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

We set an aggressive initial release date, and Knoldus Inc. was a critical part of meeting that deadline. They work well with our internal team and provide reliable and functional development.

How did Knoldus Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

We mainly leverage their offshore capacity, and they have an effective model that optimizes our partnership with them. We have an agile scrum-based team that uses Slack, Skype, and one-on-one calls to communicate. They integrated us into their Jira account, which we use to track progress and review reports. They’re an active part of our team.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They quickly developed skills in the areas we needed.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could improve their local presence so as not to rely on the offshore teams as much.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Ensure that you’ve established a clear protocol for communication before you start the project.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CTO at 3TierLogic. We are a digital marketing company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Knoldus Inc?

We contracted with Knoldus Inc to manage our platform, which hosts large data sets and provides other services for our clients.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The companies that use our platform are brands and marketing agencies. For example, our site runs a loyalty program for a large television network which rewards users for purchasing movies. We work directly with other brands to run promotions they may have, as well. Our system allows us to collect data and analyze it, which we then report back to our clients.

Knoldus Inc has incorporated Scala into the backend and utilized Angular on the UI side. They also added Elasticsearch to the analytics engine. We further rely on Knoldus Inc for system upgrades and general maintenance.

What is the team composition?

In addition to a team lead, we work with a group of 5–6 developers, which includes frontend technicians and backend programmers. There is also a data entry team.

How did you come to work with Knoldus Inc?

Once I found Knoldus Inc in a search for Scala developers, we arranged a few small sprint-based projects to determine how they work and to test their expertise. They performed well, so we felt comfortable moving forward.

How much have you invested with them?

Over the course of four years, we’ve likely spent more than $500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our engagement began in August 2014 and remains ongoing.

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

In terms of productivity, we are now able to complete many of our clients’ projects in a more timely manner. In the past, every project we’d do would take about three months. Thanks to all of the infrastructure Knoldus Inc has brought in, we’ve probably cut that in half. Their team understands the volume of work we experience with some clients, so we are now better prepared to handle that kind of traffic. Our system is stable now to the point that we haven’t had a major crash since they took over. If there ever is some kind of malfunction, they are always quick to address it.

How did Knoldus Inc perform from a project management standpoint?

The team lead makes sure deadlines are met within budget guidelines. We usually run two-week sprints with goals to achieve. We allocate different tasks to different resources, and the team lead ensures that those goals are met.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The quality of their work is excellent, a product of their extensive knowledge of the latest technology. I’ve been to their offices a few times, and they always have people learning new technologies and sharing their insight with the rest of the staff. They operate with a deep understanding of the best practices in their space.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We’ve worked with them for four years and are very happy with their work. We see no areas for improvement.

Any advice for potential customers?

Knoldus Inc is well-suited for a number of technical projects, but you have to make sure they truly understand what your project involves.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the data platform architect for InfoSight at Hewlett-Packard Enterprise.

What challenge were you trying to address with Knoldus Inc.?

We needed a partner who specialized in IoT analytics, especially microservices and stream-based processing. Our existing vendors were generalists who supported various technologies, but we needed an expert.

What was the scope of their involvement?

InfoSight is a portal for our customers and our business to get insights into how HP Enterprise products are performing in the field. It proactively detects and provides recommendations on how to solve problems before they occur. Knoldus Inc. has co-developed numerous components of our IoT analytics pipeline, such as Spark Streaming and AKKA and Lagom microservices.

What is the team composition?

They have a project manager and three other team members.

How did you come to work with Knoldus Inc.?

We asked one of our main vendors for recommendations, ideally in India since we have a lot of resources there. They suggested Knoldus Inc., so we met the CEO and hit it off right away. He was straightforward and had a great team, so we hired them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent over $1 million with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working with them on numerous projects since February 2017.

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

They have their own metrics for code quality, but it’s always high and passes our tests. Whenever there’s a bug or crash, they fix it immediately.

How did Knoldus Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re responsive and in constant communication with our team. We have daily standup meetings, chat through GitHub, and use Jira and Flowdock to track work and review code.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re a small company but still have skilled developers who are experts in our areas of need. Everyone is properly trained and focused on specific technologies, making our projects run incredibly well. Because they’re small, they pay attention to us and treat us well.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I’d appreciate more resources, especially ones in our local time zone.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Reach out and have a conversation to get to know them. You'll be happy you did.