netlabs

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Telefónica Móviles del Uruguay is a Telecom company, part of Telefónica Group, that holds one third of Uruguayan mobile market share. I lead the Business Intelligence Team whose purpose is to help the company make informed decisions and be data driven. We have different roles and activities within this scope that range from data warehouse and reports to addressing business problems and developing machine learning use cases.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire netlabs?

Telefonica Operations team first hired Netlabs for Big Data infrastructure and Hadoop environment deployments. Then, based on the expertise we knew they had on these technologies we hired them again for ETL development and use case deployments using this framework.

SOLUTION

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

We invited some well known tech companies to tender (from Uruguay and Argentina). Netlabs was by far, the most experienced on the subject with a good quality-price ratio. Moreover, we already knew their way of working which made the decision quite easy to make.

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

The goal of the Project was creating a data model with over 100 entities within the Hadoop Ecosystem for multiple purposes. We needed to use different tools within the Hadoop Ecosystem such as Hive, Pig, Oozie, Spark, and Sqoop in order to perform extraction and transformation of the data and orchestrate all processes. Then, with the model already built, we needed to move forward to the creation of different use-cases which required a lot of data processing and machine learning algorithms using PySpark and RSpark.

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

The vendor's team was composed of two Big Data Engineers that worked together with two members of the local BI/Big Data team obtaining a good balance of business and technical skills.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have used the data model on different predictive use cases adding value to different business areas within the company and contributing to their business goals.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The workflow between the teams was excellent, based on a relationship of trust and responsibility from both parties which enabled commitment as well as flexibility.

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

Their philosophy and work ethics, they are a highly specialized company focused on delivering outstanding work without overlooking people and human relationships. They really care about their employees well-being which translates into excellent delivery.

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

It's hard to find any. Whenever we had a minimal issue we would talk and solve it fluidly. As I mentioned before, one of Netlabs great strengths is the kind of trustworthy relationships they build.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CEO of Netgate. Founded in 1995 Netgate is the first private telecom company in Uruguay. We provide internet services for both consumer and corporate customers. Netgate is a company of over 80 people.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire netlabs?

We hired Netlabs as IT consultants and to provide us with technical support service for our ISP and Data Center infrastructure.

What were your goals for this project?

We needed to reduce the IT budget by at least 30% without affecting our customer service, which is one of our main assets. We also needed to make sure of our systems availability and reliability, while being able to scale with our customers growth. 

SOLUTION

How did you select netlabs?

After a few years in business, in the late 90s, we were growing steadily and were struggling with infrastructure planning and execution for growth and its increasing costs. So we got the recommendation from a colleague, who told us Netlabs was a startup of very talented technicians. We started hiring them first for specific IT operations, then for general consultancy, and since 2010, they have become our main partners for IT consultancy and third-level support.

Describe the project in detail.

We have gone through different needs and challenges throughout the years. The constant is that they always had senior experts to provide us advice, plan and deliver operations. The service agreement we currently have provides us with a monthly retainer of hours. Every month we have a planning meeting in which we define main priorities to work in addition to regular support tasks and review the last month's progress.

Some examples of the tasks we worked with them are: Infrastructure reconfiguration for unifying two physical data centers into one; Moving many of our services to the cloud, reducing costs in the process; Automating mechanisms for our staff to detect customers who try to use our email boxes for spamming.

What was the team composition?

We have a reference engineer assigned, who works together with their support and operations team, who are available 24/7. They also provide a Service Delivery Manager, with whom we plan monthly priorities for the team to work and follow-up on the main issues.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Throughout the years we had to innovate and change many times, not only our infrastructure but also the services we provide to companies and final customers. We have been able to adapt ourselves, having Netlabs as our main technological advisors, being currently the main Internet services provider in Uruguay.  

By hiring Netlabs, we were able to reduce the IT budget by at least 30% without affecting our customer service and at the same time, we gained a partner who keeps us up-to-date with the latest technology, which is essential for our development.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Currently, our technical staff has fluid communication with Netlabs using Slack and having our internal ticketing system integrated with them. Also, monthly coordination meetings are very important for keeping the teams on the same page.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They keep updated with the technology and they provide us with the expertise, knowledge, and advice that we need to be competitive in this "IT World". Also, they know how to find the root of the problems when difficult issues arise.

Are there any areas for improvement?

I think they have remarkably professionalized their service throughout the years. Maybe it would be good if they could provide some more teaching or training for our technical staff.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

LOi is the online store with the largest catalog of items on offer for all tastes and needs. Since 2005, it has brought Uruguayans, even those who live in the most remote places, with the products of the best brands at the lowest price on the market. Currently I work as CTO of LOi, leading all the technological activities of the team, Technology enthusiast with more than 20 years of experience. I’ve been part of and developed hundreds of projects with different complexity levels, working as designer, developer, analyst, advisor & team leader, both on small and large teams. Specialities: Web design, UI, UX, Javascript, Graphics Design, Digital Marketing, Branding, Art Direction, Creative Direction, Team Leadership.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire netlabs?

For us, Netlabs is more than a provider, it’s a growth and innovation strategic pattern. They help us to achieve performance, optimization, and security levels that would have been too hard to reach without their help.

What were your goals for this project?

As our eCommerce site was growing fast, we needed to make sure of keeping the performance, availability, and security of our system, even when we have marketing actions that change our traffic by orders of magnitude.

SOLUTION

How did you select netlabs?

They were recommended by a technical advisor of ours for having a highly specialized technical team. Then I got in contact with them because of a specific incident we went through. As they showed great capacities, we started a formal work contract.

Describe the project in detail.

The service consists of a retainer of hours to solve high-level tech support for difficult issues that our team used to have a hard time solving, operating our infrastructure platform, and planning together infrastructure evolution and architecture for new services in AWS.

What was the team composition?

They have teams with first-class technical capacities, super speed response, and outstanding problem-solving skills where a’ hands-on approach’ goes to a completely whole new level.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Black Friday and other high-traffic campaigns used to be a huge headache, as high traffic caused service cuts and site slowdowns, which did not allow us to unleash our sales potential. Since they intervened, our marketing efforts have tripled the number of concurrent users, without increasing our total annual AWS cost!

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Collaboration through Slack is very fluid, our reference engineer is always keen on helping and sharing his knowledge. They also keep a good track of ongoing and pending tasks.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They have a complete understanding of how AWS systems work, and that's a game-changer for us. They helped us take full advantage of AWS capacities, they do ‘magic’ at an affordable price, you don’t see this type of service so often.

Are there any areas for improvement?

They exceed at everything