Making software your most fast-paying investment
ScienceSoft is an IT consulting and software development company with 33 years of experience headquartered in the US.
Among ScienceSoft’s clients are such prominent companies as IBM, eBay, Robert Half, Viber, PerkinElmer, Ford Motor Company, and others. We provide software solutions and IT services for 30+ industries, including healthcare, manufacturing, banking, retail, telecommunications, education, oil and gas, and more.
What makes us stand out?
- Acknowledged quality
We are recognized by independent organizations, including Ernst and Young, Forrester, TechReviewer.com, as a trusted and reliable IT services provider and software development company. Our continuous dedication to clients’ success has earned us the presence in the IAOP Global Outsourcing 100 rating. The Financial Times included ScienceSoft USA Corporation in the list of the Americas' Fastest-Growing Companies 2022.
- All-encompassing competence
Our team includes 700+ specialists, including web and mobile developers, system and integration architects, cloud experts, QA, security and DevOps engineers, data scientists.
- Reliable partnership
76% of the company’s revenue comes from clients we’ve been serving for more than 1 year. We appreciate our customers’ loyalty and do everything to live up to their expectations.
- 100% project delivery
ScienceSoft leverages an efficient process management system that allows for 100% realization of quality-assured projects within deadline and budget limits. We excel at both detailed and strictly controlled project plans and projects with a great extent of uncertainty.
- Certified working processes
We have ISO 9001 certified quality management, ISO 27001 certified information security management, ISO 13486 certified quality management for medical devices and Software as a Medical Device, and more.

headquarters
other locations
Recommended Providers
Focus
Portfolio
Ford Motor Company, Deloitte, eBay, Walmart, Heinz, Nestle, IBM, NASA JPL, T-Mobile, M&T Bank, Viber, PerkinElmer, Enonic, Tieto, Koch Media, Visma, Airpas, Leo Burnett, Baxter, Pointlogic.

Telehealth Chiron App
A HIPAA-compliant telehealth app for booking appointments with doctors and getting video consultations.
Learn more

Mobile Care Coordination App Development
The Customer is a US leading health information exchange (HIE) vendor.
Challenge
The Customer's business challenge was in limited HIE capabilities, unable to ensure streamlined cooperation between patients and their caregivers. The Customer decided to introduce a mobile care coordination application to evolve their HIE platform by putting patients in charge of their health data and allowing them to control the process of sharing it with their providers and close ones. Apart of that, the Customer wanted to equip the caregivers with a mobile tool to communicate with each other on the go in case of need.
Results
ScienceSoft delivered a mobile solution to create an interconnected circle for patients and their care team members. Now, patients are in charge of their health information, aggregated from different sources, platforms and organizations, with the ability to share it with chosen caregivers. They can pick the most convenient channel and reach out to care team members, gathered in one place.
Providers, in their turn, get visibility over all their patients, their vitals, health status changes, events, emerging conditions and more. They can contact patients and other care team members in case of need. With the mobility added to care coordination, providers can ensure timely intervention and proactive approach to any condition, be it a complex chronic disease or a post-surgery recovery.

QA and Redesign of a Custom EHR Application
Customer
The Customer is a US chiropractic care provider with a few locations.
Challenge
The Customer experienced small glitches in their legacy custom EHR application and turned to ScienceSoft for consulting services to find the cause of glitches and get advice on their optimal resolution from a business point of view.
Results
In a result of QA activities small glitches were identified as serious vulnerabilities in the application system, so timely quality assessment prevented the Customer from unknowingly disclosing of PHI. The optimal way to handle them was defined as the complete redevelopment of the existing solution. ScienceSoft prepared comprehensive requirements description to deliver a new effective app in line with the current security requirements as well as ensure an impeccable patient experience with more hassle-free and low-stress services. Having received the detailed reports, the Customer was able to estimate important business points, such as overall cost of the new app, possible profit margins from selling it as SaaS, etc. The thorough requirements would also simplify the start of the application development and would become a reliable and easy-to-follow initial guide for the future development team.

UX / UI Design for Medical Rehabilitation Software
Customer
The Customer is a US healthcare software product startup.
Challenge
The Customer had a concept of B2B/B2C physical rehabilitation software for patients, therapists, and physicians. To attract investors and bring the full concept to life, they needed to demonstrate a sophisticated product demo first. They decided to develop a minimum viable product consisting of a patient mobile app and a physician’s web app.
The Customer was convinced that UX and UI will play a crucial role in impressing investors. Therefore, they required the services of a design vendor, who would be ready to provide top-notch UX and UI design.
Results
The Customer appreciated ScienceSoft’s professional approach and decided to hire them to implement the software MVP itself.

iOS Mobile App for Healthcare Professionals
Customer
The Customer is a US healthcare provider serving patients across multiple states since 2006.
Challenge
The Customer had a custom-developed EHR system. To let their employees make use of this system on the go, when making rounds in hospitals, the Customer wanted to complement the EHR solution with an iOS mobile app. With this idea, they turned to ScienceSoft, as the Customer acknowledged the company’s ample experience in hospital mobile app development.
Results
The app was released in October 2018 and the Customer was completely satisfied with both the collaboration process and the final result.

BA and UI Design for Medical Device Software
Customer
The Customer is a US-based medical equipment manufacturer that provides healthcare organizations with products for safe reprocessing of reusable medical devices, equipment, and instrumentation.
Challenge
To explore new growth opportunities, the Customer wanted to prototype web-based medical device tracking software for their existing and potential clients (healthcare organizations). Software would allow healthcare organizations to keep track of medical devices and instruments, timely disinfect, and dispose of them. To start discussing the solution with the clients, the Customer needed to create user-friendly design mock-ups.
Results
ScienceSoft provided the Customer with UI prototypes that were in line with the Customer’s brand look. Beyond the initial requirements, ScienceSoft’s team also created a marketing presentation to help the Customer pitch its medical device tracking software prototype to the partnering healthcare organizations. For the Customer, this laid the foundation for future growth and partnership strengthening.

Rakuten Viber for Android
A feature-rich VoIP and instant messaging application that has over 1.17 billion users worldwide.
Learn more

Deloitte-acknowledged Banking Apps
Banking apps with a wide range of payment integrations and a fitness-tracker based loyalty program.
Learn more

IPTV & SVOD Apps for T-Mobile, Orange, MTV, BBC
Сustomizable multi-screen apps to watch live TV streams on smartphones, tablets, TV, gaming consoles and in browsers.
Learn more: https://www.scnsoft.com/case-studies/sciencesoft-empowers-tv-apps-industry-leader

Apps for Remote Patient Monitoring
Android and iOS apps for US clinics to monitor sensor data, upload medical data, request healthcare services, make video/voice calls, etc.
Learn more: https://www.scnsoft.com/case-studies/remote-care-mobile-solution

Field Audit App for Burger King, KFC and Friday’s
A multilingual app for service-oriented companies delivered in 1.5 months. Checklists with 15 types of customizable questions that can be enriched with an intuitive metrics collection.
Learn more: https://www.scnsoft.com/case-studies/field-audit-app-for-burger-king-kfc-and-friday-s

Connected Car Application for On-Board Diagnostics
An on-board diagnostic system that sends diagnostics data, mileage, geolocation and other information to vehicle owners who can now control their vehicles from anywhere in the world through a smartphone, tablet or computer. Being an innovation on the market of connected cars, the solution has got an Edison Award.
Customer
The Customer is a Canadian company that delivers end-to-end mobile innovations in the connected transportation industry.
Challenge
Responding to the market demands, the Customer decided to bring a new smart product to the market of connected cars. The solution was supposed to be an on-board diagnostic system that sends diagnostics data, mileage, geolocation and other information to vehicle owners. ScienceSoft was chosen as an IoT development partner for the backend part to help the Customer meet the market expectations.
Read More

Modernization of a SaaS Gaming Platform to SOA
The Customer had a SaaS product – a gaming platform integrated with a number of third-party SaaS services. The system contained sophisticated billing and reporting tools to calculate and track payments.
Since the company’s client base, along with the plans to add new functionality, was growing rapidly, the Customer decided to implement a new service-oriented architecture (SOA) in order to make the system more effective and scalable. Thus, separating internal modules into self-contained services would make it easier to maintain and extend the system as well as enable parallel development.
Technologies and tools
- Frameworks & libraries: .NET, WCF, WIF, ASP.NET, ASP.MVC, WinForms, Enterprise Library, Moq, Entities Framework, NUnit.
- Languages: C#, Transact-SQL, XML, XSLT, XAML, HTML, CSS.
- Database management systems: MS SQL Server, MySQL.
- Revision control system: SVN
- IDE: MS Visual Studio
- Other tools: SMTP, MSMQ, WIX, LINQ, XSD, RSA, Team City, Enterprise Architect, FxCop, StyleCop, NCover, Flex, Flash
Check Details

24/7 Linux Administration by DevOps for a Hosting Provider
As a hosting platform provider, the Customer has quite an extensive environment comprised of around 2000 open-source servers running several Linux distributions (Debian, Redhat, CentOS).
The company provides shared hosting (a number of websites hosted on one server) and multisite hosting (geographically distributed environment) services for various kinds of WordPress solutions.
As the Customer is committed to ensuring the stability and security of the hosting platform, centralized and continuous maintenance of its servers is required.
Technologies and Tools:
- Operating systems: Linux (Debian, Redhat, CentOS).
- Web server: Apache HTTP Server, Nginx.
- Revision control systems: Apache Subversion (SVN), Git.
- Scripting languages: PHP, Perl, Bash.
- Network management systems: Zabbix, Nagios.
- Configuration management systems: Puppet, Chef.
- Other tools: MemcacheDB, MySQL database, Varnish daemon.
Check details

Penetration Testing to Improve ePHI Security
Summary
ScienceSoft verified the IT infrastructure of a speech recognition software provider against vulnerabilities and conducted black box pentesting of their solution used at 500+ healthcare organizations to ensure ePHIs remained uncompromised.
Speech Recognition Application Security Testing
Bringing in vast experience in cybersecurity and healthcare IT, ScienceSoft’s team devised a tailored plan and conducted black box penetration testing of reconice’s speech recognition application Dycendo. Having limited information about the application, ScienceSoft’s cybersecurity experts imitated a real-life hacking attack to reveal potential security issues. As a result, reconice got a list of the vulnerabilities and a thorough mitigation plan to improve the application’s security and protect ePHIs created by its clients from theft, inappropriate use, deletion, etc.
IT Infrastructure Security Testing
To check reconice’s IT infrastructure against cyberthreats, ScienceSoft’s cybersecurity experts carried out black box penetration without any information on the Customer’s current security policies and network protection. As a result of black box penetration testing, ScienceSoft provided reconice with tangible steps towards risks elimination.
As employees may be a prominent cybersecurity risk factor, additionally, ScienceSoft’s experts decided to imitate a phishing attack against the Customer’s staff. The campaign helped reconice identify gaps in its employees' cybersecurity awareness, in particular, the ability to recognize and withstand social engineering techniques.

DevOps Implementation for a Retail and Hospitality Company
The Customer had an IT infrastructure consisting of more than 50 servers with a range of integrated systems: an ecommerce website, CRM, a data warehouse, and others.
The number of the Customer’s clients was rapidly increasing together with their needs, so the Customer needed to frequently update their applications to keep their clients satisfied. To meet these and other business needs, the Customer needed their IT infrastructure properly managed, regularly enhanced without critical operational errors and system failures, and continuously monitored to make sure their web services were highly available.
Technologies and tools
- Source code repository: Stash.
- Continuous deployment: Jenkins.
- Configuration management: Ansible.
- Containerization and container management: Docker, Distributed Cloud Operating System (DC/OS), Apache Mesos.
- Load balancers and HTTP caches: Nginx, HAProxy, Traefik, Supervisor, Varnish.
- Server monitoring: Zabbix, Prometheus, Blackbox Exporter, Container Advisor.
- Log management: Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana (ELK).
Check details

Phrasebook Travel App and Learning Portal
Two innovative language learning tools: a mobile app (originally only iOS) which would serve as a handy traveler’s phrasebook and a learning web portal where users could further polish their conversational skills.
Read More

Viber App Development Outsourcing Based on the BOT
The Customer is the creator of Viber, a cross-platform VoIP and instant messaging app that now connects over a billion users across the world.
After a release of the iOS app, Viber needed additional development resources to expand their market’s presence with Android and desktop apps. Recruiting in-house developers wasn’t a feasible option in terms of time required, so they considered a long-term partnership with an external vendor. However, they were looking for a deeper developers’ commitment and more operational control than team augmentation or dedicated team outsourcing options provide. To solve the dilemma, they decided to engage with a partner that can offer the Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) model of cooperation and prepare the ground for opening Viber’s own development center offshore.
Partnership with ScienceSoft allowed Viber to establish their own fully operational offshore development center in a risk-free and cost-efficient way. At the same time, the Customer leveraged common benefits of outsourcing development: fast project launch, reduced development costs, tapping into a local talent pool without a recruitment headache.

Stop Procrastinating App
The award-winning productivity tool that has been repeatedly acknowledged as one of the best Internet blockers by world-renowned media like the BBC, the Daily Telegraph, Le Monde and others.
Read More

Migration to Pimcoreand AWS Hosting for Optimizing Telecommunications Websites
The Customer ran two Magento-based websites–one for subscription services and mobile devices sale, and one for hotspots sale.Though the company used a free Magento Open Source edition, the cost of support services was rather high for them. Besides, they had serious concerns about the solution.
Poor customer experience. The critical problems that ruined opening and conversion rates were slow loading speed and recurring issues with connecting to a payment provider at the checkout (resulting in cases of valid credit cards being rejected). Also, due to an error in the setup of configurable products, the websites featured an obsolete product catalog where each variable product appeared on a different page. What is more, the design of both websites was non-responsive on older versions of browsers and some older mobile devices. Taking into account the target audience of the Customer’s business (low-income citizens), this considerably decreased the mobile traffic.
Low solution adoption by the team. The Magento admin panel wasn’t user-friendly for non-techies, so content and product managers of the Customer had to contact their Magento support team often for assistance in their work. Besides, they reported the redundant functionality that wasn’t used and only hampered their daily activities.
The Customer looked for a competent vendor to design and implement a cost-effective solution to improve the websites' performance and UX as well as to optimize the admin panel for the team.
Check details

8,000+ FMCG Brand Health BI
The BI solution for the global FMCG company with 8,000+ brands worldwide allows managing the quality and consistency of marketing strategies, thereby ensuring data-driven decision making. The analytical system collects survey data and processes it to disclose the real drivers of consumers’ behavior.
Read More

Ecommerce Development for a Provider of Fruit and Vegetable Delivery Service
Launched in 2007, the Customer is a leading company in Spain in cultivation and distribution of fruit and vegetables for individual and corporate needs. The company produces organic fruit and vegetables using environment-friendly methods and packs them into product boxes. The Customer initially offered delivery services in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Bilbao, Tarragona and Andorra la Vella. To expand their services countrywide, the company needed to launch a Magento-based online store with integrated control over the order processing. ScienceSoft presented an ecommerce solution in full compliance with the Customer’s needs. The team of two Magento developers created a visually appealing online store with convenient navigation.

Managed Testing Services of a Web and Mobile Solution for US Healthcare Providers
Challenge
One of the Customer’s HIE solutions was under development. It comprised several modules, for example, a health monitoring, an electronic medication administration record (EMAR), and a risk management module.
The Customer needed to ensure the system’s high user adoption rate, so the software was to be fully functional, stable, and address special usability requirements. Another challenge was imposed by the system’s internal inter-module integration and external integration with multiple EHR systems, which had to be thoroughly checked.
The software was intended for both web and mobile use. The Customer needed a professional managed testing provider experienced with both web and mobile application testing.
Thus, the provider should not only come up with optimal testing types’ prioritization, but also cover all the aspects specific to testing of each application type.
Results
The Customer got their software thoroughly tested to ensure its smooth and sufficient functionality, proper integration with varied EHR systems, compatibility with required web browsers and versions of mobile OSs, and the system’s performance under continuous load and simultaneous utilization by multiple users. Also, the Customer got sure the applications’ UX would meet the demands of all user groups.

Salesforce Customization for the Roofing Services Provider
Challenge
The Customer commissioned ScienceSoft to perform Salesforce customization of their Sales Cloud-based solution. The Customer required to customize report types (like the report on additional services and the product reports) for better visibility into the distribution of teams’ efforts and the use of materials for their projects. The Customer also needed to present the information about their revenues and expenses in a more convenient and user-friendly way. Other requirements were to streamline the processes of creating warranty emails, invoices and introducing the process of purchase orders’ (POs) approval.
Results
The Customer got their Salesforce-based solution further tailored to their business needs. The customized reports on additional services and product reports ensured better visibility into the teams’ performance and the amount of roofing materials used for different projects. New revenue and expenses report types enabled better transparency into the correlation of the Customer’s revenues and expenses. Enabling the templates for warranty emails and invoices helped to create them faster and easier. Digitizing the PO approval process added to its transparency and made tracking changes to the POs easier. The additional health check of the Customer’s Salesforce-based solution allowed exposing some inefficient processes and optimizing them.

Data Analytics Platform for a US Telecom Company Operating in 18 States
Challenge
As a part of the project, ScienceSoft’s BI consultants were to design and implement data management and analytics platform to let the Customer collect the data from multiple sources and get insights into customer behavior. The Customer wanted the platform to analyze historical data and enable forecasting.
Results
Thanks to the delivered data analytics platform, the Customer was able to:
- Measure the engagement and identify the preferences of a particular user.
- Spot trends in the users’ behavior.
- Make predictions about how users would behave.
- Invoice advertisers based on their calculated share.
- Benefit from insightful data analytics (for example, daily earnings, number of new users, customer service data and more).
The use of Amazon Spot Instances allowed the Customer to reduce the costs of AWS computing resources by 80%.

Big Data Analytics Revealing Media Consumption Patterns in 10+ Countries
Challenge
Though having a robust analytical system, the Customer believed that it would not be able to satisfy the company’s future needs. A system-to-be was to cope with the continuously growing amount of data, to analyze big data faster and to provide insights into media consumption patterns based on the analytics results.
For the new analytical system, the following frameworks were selected:
- Apache Hadoop – for data storage;
- Apache Hive – for data aggregation, query and analysis;
- Apache Spark – for data processing.
Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure were selected as cloud computing platforms.
Overall, the solution included five main modules:
- Data preparation
- Staging
- Data warehouse 1
- Data warehouse 2
- Desktop application
Results
At the project closing stage, the new system was able to process several queries up to 100 times faster than the outdated solution. With the valuable insights that the analysis of almost 30,000 attributes brought, the Customer was able to understand media consumption patterns worldwide and get a clear picture of different markets.

Email Tracking Solution for Microsoft Dynamics CRM
The Customer received a tailored add-on to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 in due time. The customized email tracker elaborated by ScienceSoft’s team fully met the Customer’s desired requirements featuring a wider functionality as compared to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 for Outlook.
The EmailScoop implementation allowed around 80 Customer’s employees to streamline their email communication and improve customer service. In particular, it allowed to smoothly track all incoming/outgoing emails, as well as to block the possibility of email tracking for certain employees according to the company’s internal policies.

SharePoint Portal for an International Chain of 14 Shopping Malls
The custom-made SharePoint-based portal covers the needs of around 3,000 users and supports 1,000 concurrent users. Owing to the flexible notification system, the shopping center administration, tenants and contractors are constantly aware of the request status and are able to control its progress.
The improved request workflows resulted in better service quality as well as the tenants’ and contractors’ higher loyalty.

Magento E-Shop for a Beauty Store with Expert Skincare Consulting
The Customer wanted to give a new life to its online store by updating to Magento 1.9 version and improving the website performance. It aimed to go beyond the traditional vision of a Magento e-shop by establishing effective communication with customers.
ScienceSoft handled a smooth update, customized Magento extensions and enhanced the overall performance of the website. The team created a mobile version of the website with convenient navigation.
The Customer appreciated ScienceSoft’s ability to fulfill the requirements and a tailored approach to the project. The online store with smooth navigation, strong customer support and a convenient mobile version became the reflection of the company’s customer-oriented policy. This formed a firm foundation for customer loyalty and revenue increase.

Magento E-shop Fine-tuning for an Eco-Friendly Apparel Store
To launch their e-shop, the Customer integrated Magento with TYPO3 CMS. There were some inconsistencies on the company’s website that hindered the growth of the business:
- Product overview, product detail pages and design of the shopping cart did not conform to the Customer’s requirements.
- Payment options represented in the online store were irrelevant.
- The Customer was concerned about security issues. The account registration process needed to be improved to protect customer data.
The Customer chose ScienceSoft as an expert Magento development company to polish its online store according to all the requirements. ScienceSoft addressed the Customer’s problems and enhanced the online store.
The Customer’s online store now fully corresponds to their current offerings and customer service processes. Visitors don’t see any inconsistences between online and real-life information, which contributes greatly to building customer loyalty.

Innovative CMS
Striving to bring Web Content Management solutions to the next level, Enonic in cooperation with ScienceSoft has released a brand-new CMS called Enonic eXperience Platform which provides a safe and predictable foundation for online presence of any kind. With a modern and flexible architecture, the platform offers an intuitive and fast way to create and manage websites, intranets, commerce and mobile solutions for public and private enterprises.
Read More

SharePoint-Based Intranet for 45,000-employee Bank
A corporate-wide Intranet solution for an American full-service commercial bank to facilitate collaboration between departments. The solution provides tools for sharing documents and storing corporate knowledge base and also encourages internal communication to streamline business processes across all bank levels.
Read More

Invention Machine With Semantic Search
A number of products to help big companies improve their innovation process with the help of semantic analysis of natural language texts including 15 mln worldwide patents, 3,000 cross-disciplinary scientific 'deep web' websites and the database of 8,000 scientific effects. The software allows engineering, marketing and production personnel to find more cost-effective, competitive and higher-quality system designs.
Read More

iLivid download manager
A handy desktop application to help users enjoy a better experience of downloading videos from popular file-sharing websites including over 50 hosting services, such as RapidShare, MediaFire, Hotfile, 4shared and others including torrent sites. Users can watch videos instantly or use one-click downloader to automatically save the file. The application was designed to download videos from the leading video sites such as YouTube, Vimeo, Metacafe, Dailymotion and more.
Read More

CRM for a retail bank with 7 mln clients
Backed by a 7-year expertise in Microsoft Dynamics CRM development, ScienceSoft joined the project to help the Customer creat a CRM system for a bank with 7 million clients. Our team developed three modules: customer base management, sales activities planning and advanced analytics.
Read More

Alternative web browser
A Mac version of the all-in-one web browser specifically suitable for music connoisseurs, video lovers and people with an active online presence. ScienceSoft also implemented a system of updates for Windows and Mac as well as a solution for torrents managing from the browser.
Read More

ScienceSoft helps create the world’s largest PLM platform
The product lifecycle management solution, powering 20,000 retailers, manufacturers and suppliers in 110 countries, is a unique system that drives the development of products with $300+ bln in annual sales. The cloud-based platform helps all the industry players to conjoin their efforts, knowledge and clients, providing faster communication, more accurate data and transparency in their ventures.
Read More

Customer Portal for Air Freight Carrier
ScienceSoft implemented a customer portal for an air freight carrier, helping the company establish direct communication with their clients and secure exchange of confidential information (RFQs, price rates, invoices, etc.).
See more here: https://www.scnsoft.com/case-studies/customer-portal-implementation-to-protect-business-data-confidentiality

Viber Billing Portal Development
Viber is known for its cheap phone calls worldwide. To make this service even more convenient for users, the company decided to develop a fully-functional and user friendly self-service portal for managing payments and tariffs. To make this project possible, Viber Media has chosen ScienceSoft as a main technical partner with experience in portal development.
Since Viber is one of the most popular call / messaging apps on the market, it was not a surprise that any module or feature had to be designed with a high load in mind. That is why ScienceSoft did the following:
- The code was distributed among several servers
- Load balancer was implemented
- Sessions and frequently used data were stored in memcache
- Code and static page caching was done with Alternative PHP Cache
We ensured covering all the users by making frontend fully compatible with FireFox, Chrome, Safari, Explorer 8 and above. In addition, we have used jQuery and mediaQuery to make the portal convenient for Android, iOS and Windows Phone browsers.
Since the portal is dealing with personal information and money, it was important to protect users from possible frauds. That is why ScienceSoft has covered protection against XSS and CSRF attacks through tokens, processing incoming and outgoing data, blocking data loading to iframe, etc.
To make the system convenient for all types of users, it was designed to accept payments through all the most popular payment methods: Visa, MasterCard, American Express, PayPal. Additionally the system supports in-app purchases on Android, iOS and Windows Phone.
ScienceSoft did a great job at a payment module architecture so integration of a new payment merchant won’t take much time and efforts in the future.
Reviews
the project
Data Migration to AWS for Consumer Products & Services Firm
"ScienceSoft has very solid project management."
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Please describe your organization.
At the point in time that we worked with ScienceSoft, it was called something else, and it offers a cashback portal to customers. A customer may affiliate himself or herself with the portal, make an account, and then when they proceed to follow links and shop at their favorite brands, like Wal-Mart or Amazon, they can earn cash back through what's normally termed the affiliate marketing. We then share those profits with the customer. That is our core portal and platform.
What is your position?
At the time of the ScienceSoft integration, I was vice president of engineering, but now I'm the CTO.
What business challenge were you trying to address with ScienceSoft?
I inherited the contract. They were about a month into it. The original idea was to facilitate a migration from the prior hosting to Amazon Web Services hosting and, as such, to implement some of the best standards for hosting, databases, and servers.
We haven't since expanded the scope of their involvement, mainly because the system that they were migrating, and assisting with migration, has been slated for sun setting, and a new system will be replacing it. Their expertise was no longer required with the team that we had assembled for the new system. Essentially, with the additional staffing in-house, we now have the talent internally.
Please describe the scope of their involvement.
We were allocated a team of four developers. Two were working, one was the account manager, and one was the project manager. Our interactions were mediated by the project manager. Our developer was working with their developers when they were on specific things, like moving a specific service, to understand the implication.
How did you come to work with ScienceSoft?
I'm actually unaware of that. That was done prior to my start, in a period of time when there was no CTO or vice president of engineering. It was kind of an interesting period for the company. I'm not actually sure about the selection criteria. If I had to put a hunch on it, it was most likely a personal reference from somebody. Most of the decisions seem to have taken that route.
Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?
I'm not sure. I know it was hourly, and there were a few extensions. Obviously, the costs were beneficial, compared to a United States-based consulting agency, due to the currency situation, but I do not recall the actual financials. It was an hourly-based project, so their statements of work were basically estimatations for the amount of time that it would take. It was a fixed price but based upon hourly.
What is the status of this engagement?
The relationship has ended, due to the implementation of a new system and the addition of in-house staff.
Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?
They were able to increase throughput approximately twofold. That's not saying too much, however. There were signs that this was one of their first gigs on an Amazon migration, merely from the way that they configured the environment. They didn't follow some of the best practices for security and for performance speed. The way that they configured the databases in the replica, the server access, the auto-scaling isn't there. However, a lot of that was hampered by the old codebase that they were having to migrate. It did not lend itself to Amazon's scale. It was not designed for a cloud's scale, and they did not have the scope or the time to re-architect the system.
It was to basically take a giant, monolithic, old stack and place it into Amazon. They were successful in that and they were able to make out approximately a two times throughput compared to the old system, by load balancing the few components that would allow them do to that. It's kind of a hard one to judge them. The stack does not lend itself to cloud scale. However, there were some of the small things that made it clear that they were not as experienced with Amazon as they perhaps sold themselves to be. Then again, I was not involved in the selection process, so I don't know how they presented themselves and their services. If they sold themselves as experts, or if they sold themselves as experts on PHP and MySQL and they were willing to incur the learning cost of Amazon, I'm not sure.
Since we have terminated the contract, we have fixed malfunctions in-house. We did bring them back on for a very short spike when they needed to modify the database backup solution that they had elected. That's another weird one, Amazon does that for you, and you don't need to pay somebody to do that. There are some examples of things like that, but they were able to come back in, they were able to bring on the same team members who had been involved beforehand. They were able to resolve that little bug quickly and get it up to date, and it's been running smoothly since then.
How did ScienceSoft perform from a project management standpoint?
They delivered the majority of their milestones on time and within budget. They're good at communication as well. We used JIRA for managing the project. It was our in-house JIRA, and we created the project specifically for them. We appreciated how flexible they were with that.
What distinguishes ScienceSoft from other providers?
Nothing that stands out. ScienceSoft has very solid project management, and they do very well on the communications, which shouldn't be a cause to stand out, but it actually is. I think they can be praised for that quite a lot. They were always very clear and concise on where they were. There was never that offshore consultancy dead air or silence that is often so dreaded. They're very on top of it with their communications and their scheduled communication, both written and in a verbal scrum-style updates. They did very well in that respect.
Is there anything ScienceSoft could have improved or done differently?
No. They did quite well both in written and verbal communication. They were on top of it. Their estimations were close. In software, there are always some surprises, and when those occurred, they were quite quick to prompt the conversation for a re-estimation based on newly learned insight.
Without being involved in the selection criteria, I don't know how well they pitched themselves as Amazon experts or if they did at all. If they had pitched themselves as Amazon experts, I would say that they need to reevaluate what that truly means. However, if they were forthright and it was a good learning opportunity, and they were more about being PHP MySQL experts, then they did a great job. They actually got it into place and it's functional. It's just that it doesn't follow some of the best practices with Amazon.
When working with ScienceSoft, I would say it's important to have adequate internal technical oversight, and use ScienceSoft in more of a staff augmentation capacity, rather than in a project bid consultancy style. For a migration like this, it would have been beneficial to have an internal insight that had the knowledge, but didn't necessarily have the time to do the work. Whereas, perhaps in other components of ScienceSoft's expertise, they could absolutely take a project 100 percent and run with it. In this case with Amazon, I would say that they could have done more staff augmentation. If they had guidance, it would have been easier and better for them.
the project
Custom Development Projects for Photography Startup
"[T]he product meets our needs from a value standpoint, and it's been consistently working."
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Please describe your organization.
We've developed a turnkey photo solution for adventure tourism businesses. We provide everything an adventure tourism business needs to retail photos to their clients. However, really what we are is a marketing service. We see more value in what people do with the images and how they share the images and generate brand exposure and referrals for our clients.
We try to leverage and make the most out of the content that we sell so that more people are aware of the clients that we work with and more people return and visit those clients. We have a lot of different technologies in our product as far as how we gather these images, to how we retail them and view them, to how we deliver them, and how people access and share them.
What is your position and responsibilities?
I am the president.
What business challenge were you trying to address with ScienceSoft?
We had already developed a first version of our solution. It was more of a beta version software for our system that showed viability at our first location – the first company that we worked with. We had developed that with another company in Minsk [Belarus], but we weren't happy with the correspondence and the ability to work with that company. We were looking to redevelop what we had currently done, with some significant improvements as well. We had a proof of concept, and we had seen success with the technology we had developed, but we wanted to improve it. The other provider didn't allow us to do that, so we redeveloped the entire system with improvements, with ScienceSoft.
Please describe the scope of their involvement more detail.
They've developed Android applications and iterations of our existing app – too many to count. They've developed our web app, which is the system that our clients use to show and deliver the images to their guests. Then, the most recent project, they developed a consumer web application, which is used by photo recipients or people that purchase their images, to download and share their photos. There are really three main things. There is a second application that we developed for the RFID [radio-frequency identification] reader that is connected to our devices, to our cameras. They developed the application that worked with this RFID reader to associate images to RFID tags.
I can't comment on what technologies they used for development. That is above my skill set. Aside from the fact that they developed in Android and Java, and I don't even know what that means.
How did you come to work with ScienceSoft?
With the very first company that I worked with, I worked with a project manager who had left that company and started working for ScienceSoft. He was a very instrumental resource for me even though the development of my original product was with the other company. He was a third-party resource for me, one that I could use to bounce ideas off of because I have no experience in tech. That's not my background. I was just kind of a dreamer, I came up with an idea and I needed somebody to help facilitate it. He had worked for ScienceSoft, and then when I looked to redevelop, I had made the decision that I wasn't getting the feedback that I was looking for from this one other developer, and I decided at that point that I was going to switch developers.
I posted an RFP on Elance and a number of different technology providers made bids on the project. Then, I approached ScienceSoft not through Elance, but through this contact. They also bid on the project, and they were the most comprehensive in their approach. They weren't the most affordable, to be honest, but they were very detail oriented and understood the project from a business perspective. A lot of the other people were like, "Oh yes, we can do it," but didn't lay out a plan. ScienceSoft was very specific in their proposal. They wanted detailed information on what I was looking for and provided a robust estimation, along with a project plan that was very detailed and specific to what I needed. They were clear front-runners of the project, but not the most affordable.
Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?
On average, it's been around $50,000 a year for four years.
What is the status of this engagement?
We have used them and we still use them. It's been four years.
Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?
They laid that out for me. There are two different models, and we've been working on time and materials. There was another model, but I can't remember the terminology that they used, I think fixed price. I'm not even sure this is the right terminology, but one was time and materials, and the other is project based, where they create an estimation and stay within that quote. We began with more of a time and materials approach, but I'll probably work with the other approach moving forward.
What I liked was that they provided a very detailed project plan, and there is a cost associated with each feature that I developed within the system. Now, I work with a business analyst who takes my idea and puts it into a vision document with technical specifications, and then the project manager and the developers would put that into a project plan. They would provide me with a detailed summary of what pieces they were going to develop, how long it would take, what date they were starting, and when they were finishing.
Then, we would have regular meetings to find out if they were on schedule. They would include some additional time for unexpected contingencies. They were very good at that, and they stayed on schedule. Every single piece that we were developing, they broke it out from the technical specifications and associated a time and cost to it. We were able to maintain the schedule for that development, and they were very good at meeting the timeframe that they had set out.
We also worked on a time and materials basis recently. They actually lined it out the exact same way. They provided options like, "We can develop it based on project or we can be more nimble." I can't remember the terminology they used – it's not time and materials. There was a framework for completing projects where we were more nimble, and we could move in different directions, so we weren't held accountable to the actual project plan. That's what they did for the last development.
I like having something fixed, a very specific plan, especially when we included the business analyst who helped us define our requirements. When she came on board, we were extremely prepared. Previously, I was still in that role of developing technical specifications with the project manager, but we were very detailed this time through. I'll probably work with a business analyst again and work project based, not do time and materials moving forward.
The feedback from other stakeholders and end users was absolutely positive. We're having success, we're growing, and we're receiving more clients all the time. It's our company's vision and value proposition that I think matters to our clients, but the product meets our needs from a value standpoint, and it's been consistently working for our clients. We've had a little downtime in the past and a few minor challenges with delivery. There's always bugs in developing, and it's frustrating, but it's filled our exact requirements and allowed us to build our business.
How did ScienceSoft perform from a project management standpoint?
ScienceSoft met the project deadlines and remained within budget on their side. It's difficult on my side. You want to develop everything, so it's hard once you start down a path. You want to make changes and improvements. I think the only challenge comes with our company trying to be more conservative with what we develop and taking the right approach.
I think you get frustrated because it's expensive to develop things, regardless of whether you're using overseas resources or not. There are a lot of costs associated with developing technology from the ground up, which is what they've done. They've coded everything, so that's expensive. Then, there are challenges with bugs, and it's difficult to expect until you deploy.
In some regard, maybe we've gone over budget, but it's been our responsibility for that. That's where when moving to time and materials, you have to be careful. Probably moving forward, just for my company's sake, we won't be using that model. Then, you create clear expectations of what they're going to develop and what the timeframe is. I like that better, rather than freewheeling.
They provided tools for project management, and one of them was JIRA. Many times, it was more resources that we developed in-house. We were using just their documents. A lot of this stuff is like speaking a different language to me. We did a project where we tested the system, and I think they used something called JMeter. I'm sure there's a number of tools they provided me access to, but I'm not really familiar with them.
Is there anything ScienceSoft could have improved or done differently?
I think there's definitely some waste when you end up working with an overseas vendor, and it's probably around communication. Most of the issues that we've had have been with communication or miscommunication. I'm not saying they can't speak our language – we're absolutely able to communicate back and forth – but I think that there are challenges where they don't understand lay terminology. I think communication is a major issue in all business, and it becomes even harder when you're working with somebody overseas.
They're obviously in a different time zone – they're six hours ahead – so we have a window of opportunity to work with them every morning. That has been to our advantage, in some cases, when we want technology developed and it's critical. If we have a critical bug, they can get it resolved before the next working day, which is good. When we're doing development planning, it's hard because you have a window of opportunity to work with them, and communicating through Skype is not as productive as communicating in person.
There's definitely a waste that you have to anticipate, but it's not necessarily on their side. It can be communication breakdown, or timing, not being able to be with them for eight hours. If you look at an entire project, it would be at least 15 percent faster to do it if you're working with somebody in-house. The benefit is that it's much more affordable, and they have a number of different resources with expertise that I work with. I just can't bring in a business analyst, a project manager, a Java developer, and an Android developer. They can provide all those resources.
That's one area – the communication. Not necessarily a language barrier, but them taking a more active role in understanding what I need to accomplish because I'm not speaking from a technical background. I'm somebody that doesn't have a high expertise in tech, so taking a more active approach in understanding what we need to accomplish or what our goals are, rather than just putting your head down and developing. I'm probably going to go there for our next big development. I'm going to actually visit them and sit in a room together and develop the tech specs and vision document in-house. I think it would be far more productive.
the project
SharePoint Development for IT Consultancy
“They are nailing the sprints, they are nailing the budget, and they're sticking to commitments.”
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Please describe your organization.
Our company is a systems integrator. We offer consulting, design and development services, and enterprise systems architecture to plan, design, and build enterprise platforms.
What is your position?
I am the chief solutions architect.
What business challenge were you trying to address with ScienceSoft?
They have completed a number of different projects for us. The first one was a SharePoint platform. They were customizing, upgrading, and implementing it for us as well handling our data migration. In this case, there was also a lot of custom workflow design, creating custom templates and views, custom security features, admin groups, migrating the users and permissions, usability, and functional testing – kind of the whole nine yards. There was no way we could have handled all of the work by ourselves within the defined timeline, so we really relied on them to support our delivery.
Please describe the scope of their involvement in more detail.
None of the projects were that large in size. They lasted about a month here and there – two weeks of development there. I'd say, all in all, we've probably completed five separate SharePoint projects with them, but they also took care of a Salesforce integration with us with a Java-based app. They did an excellent job with that. It was impressive work. They've done a couple of SharePoints for us, in both SharePoint 2012 and in the cloud, Office 365 migration.
There's usually a SharePoint systems administrator. There's always a SharePoint developer for coding custom templates and workflows. Then, there's usually a custom visual design done by a front-end template developer, doing all the CSS-type work to get a custom look and feel to the out of the box SharePoint solution. Then, there's usually someone testing and a day-to-day server specialist, who sometimes troubleshoots network server or hardware issues. We log stories and such, using agile and a JIRA tool, where there's a project plan or a smart sheet.
How did you come to work with ScienceSoft?
I never know where these emails come from, but I get solicitations on a daily basis from companies saying, "We've got .NET developers" and so on. They look at our website, and they see all of our keywords. I don't know if these are automated tools or it's done by salespeople manually, but I think they emailed us, offering resources. I guess their timing was right. They weren't the only vendor that we were considering. We have a big partner network of vendors that we team up with on different specialties and solutions.
Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?
I'd say total ballpark, we've probably spent $50,000 to $70,000 – somewhere in that range.
What is the status of this engagement?
The timeline of the project was two months, and they completed the work within that allotted timeframe. We're about to do implement a WordPress platform and probably implement some upgrades to the Java app. We'll continue to turn to them for SharePoint-based work. They're far superior to the India or Asia offshore providers, in my opinion. This is just my two cents, but the United States kind of invented systems engineering and software engineering, and we dominate the software industry. Other than SAP and the like, there are no other global software providers outside of the U.S. We take for granted that we're the best at it, but India, Asia, South America claim to be great at it, too, but they're really not. I only really trust code out of Europe and the US.
What I mean by trust, I trust that they're sticklers for standards, syntax, error-free code, principles of object orientation, intuitive design, and so forth. That structured approach to coding and object-oriented design is completely lacking in the rest of the world, in my opinion. Not to make too blanket of a statement, but the fact that they're coming out of Europe helps a ton because they're extremely logical and structured in their project management, their analysis, and their documentation. It's all there.
Could you share any statistics, benchmarks or user feedback from this engagement?
We have a value-based consulting process, so we don't even get into a project until we understand the value it has to the business. Around that is some sort of ROI [return on investment], but that ROI is driven from either efficiency, saving hours, growing the company, helping it scale, eliminating bottlenecks and redundancies, so it's hard to say. In terms of standard metrics, moving all your documents into a SharePoint environment and moving them to the cloud has huge advantages in IT [information technology], infrastructure savings just from a cloud-based architecture, huge savings typically in licensing of all the Microsoft servers you would need to host traditional document servers.
I'd say infrastructure costs – there are a lot of business efficiencies in terms of how they find documents and collaborate. We typically aim for more than 100 percent improvement. For example, let's say it takes me five minutes to find a document now. We don't want to help you find it twice as fast – we want you to find it four times as fast. By consolidating all your documents in the cloud and tagging them for search, you should now be able to find documents in seconds that you probably would have never found before on a flat file structure. We routinely get 200 percent or 400 percent improvement in efficiency, workflow type solutions in a business process. All of our solutions are targeted at that.
They generally run their stuff tight. I think these guys being out of a Western European culture, and they run organized. Sprints typically run on time, they are deadline-oriented, and they can conduct meetings effectively. Even though English is their second language, they're proficient in speaking and writing. They're comfortable with written documentation, too, which is also somewhat rare in the software industry.
How did ScienceSoft perform from a project management standpoint?
The stakeholders that interacted with them were all satisfied with the quality of their work and the consistency of their project management approach. Generally, they are completing all the projects on time and within the budget that was prescribed. They are nailing the sprints, they are nailing the budget, and they're sticking to commitments. One project got a little bit sideways, but I don't know if it was necessarily their fault. The client had trouble nailing down the requirements. That happens from time to time.
I'm not going to say every project is perfect. However, when we're faced with challenges, they knew how to tackle them, and they did it in a fair way. They negotiated the scope or any additional hours in a reasonable way.
What distinguishes ScienceSoft from other providers?
ScienceSoft is pretty organized. A lot of companies tell you they've got all these processes and methods, and then when you start working with them, you always regret it. It's all out the window, and they all say they need more requirements. What's reassuring is that these guys really have in-depth expertise in the field. They're comfortable in that consulting role, like, "We've got this. We're the experts – we'll surface the issues. We're on top of it." That's comforting from a client perspective because we don't always have the answers.
While a lot of other outsourced contract-type people kind of rest back and let the client be the expert. These guys are like, "No, we've got this. We have our own testing techniques, our own this and our own that." They're very comfortable with that, and it's almost like a turnkey outsourcing solution.
Is there anything ScienceSoft could have improved or done differently?
The only one that we ever discussed is about having small teams, where the developer is also the tester. We did have a few defects that slipped through that could have been caught by external testing. We didn't put a tester on the team, so you could say that it's our fault. That's not about them – it's more like a best practice in development, that developers shouldn't be testing their own code. If it's a small project with a small team of one person, for three weeks, it's kind of hard to throw another tester on there.
They probably could have made a stronger recommendation toward an independent tester that would have caught the defect. Whether they made that recommendation and we didn't take them up on it, I can't recall. Anyway, it shouldn't really be a ding against them. Both of us, being systems engineers, should have known better.
Even in an agile environment, it's supposed to be testing as you go, not reserved for the end. But, how many people really have testing embedded in the scrum team? Not many. A lot of people do fall in that traditional waterfall, like, "OK, I developed it. Now, let's add a sprint in for testing." Pure agile is supposed to be releasing production-ready code at the end of every sprint. It kind of implies that independent testing is built-in to the development cycles. That's a minor talking point. I don't know if your clients geek out on such topics. Still, it's a useful piece of advice.
the project
Web Application Penetration Testing for Bank
"The workflow is very good."
the reviewer
the review
The client submitted this review online.
Please describe your company and your position there.
My Company is Bank , Head of Information security office
For what projects/services did your company hire ScienceSoft?
pentation test for web application
How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?
by searching the best companies in pentation test,it appear number one.
Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.
Black Box based on the OWASP Web Security Testing Guide. first test-report- time to fix vulnerability -second test-report
How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?
3 engineers, Senior Sales Manager-Project Manager-Lead Information Security Specialist
Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?
no
How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?
The workflow is very good
What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?
Good team , good response , good feedback.
Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?
No
the project
Security Audit for Currency-Focused Software Company
"They provide high quality at a very reasonable cost."
the reviewer
the review
The client submitted this review online.
Please describe your company and your position there.
I am the Director of Technology at Ghostlab, a company that makes software enabling people to use cryptocurrency as if it was fiat currency.
For what projects/services did your company hire ScienceSoft?
Gray-box security audit & penetration test.
What were your goals for this project?
Identify any security holes in our system and remediate them.
How did you select ScienceSoft?
We searched online for a list of the most reputable pentest firms and then selected ScienceSoft from a shortlist of 5 candidates.
Describe the project in detail.
Penetration test - they tried to break into all of our services and documented any successful attepts.
What was the team composition?
2 pentesters and a project manager.
Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?
We received a list of 9 identified security vulnerabilities along with mitigation instructions & ScienceSoft performed a retest to confirm our successful remediation.
How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?
Very happy with our communication.
What did you find most impressive about this company?
They provide high quality at a very reasonable cost.
Are there any areas for improvement?
N/a
the project
Penetration Testing for Job Advertising Service
"They were flexible with us, worked quickly, and provided good feedback."
the reviewer
the review
The client submitted this review online.
Please describe your company and your position there.
I’m the CTO of Appcast, a job advertising solution based on a pay-per-applicant model.
For what projects/services did your company hire ScienceSoft?
We hired ScienceSoft to perform penetration testing on our platform.
What were your goals for this project?
We wanted to establish our current security status, define vulnerabilities, fix them, and then test them again to ensure they were resolved.
How did you select this vendor?
We read feedback from other companies that had used ScienceSoft for penetration testing.
Describe the project in detail.
Once we selected this vendor, we had a kick-off meeting with them. They explained their different testing methodologies and provided us with details of how they’d approach our situation. Their test identified a few security vulnerabilities. They assigned a severity to each, provided steps to fix the issues, and explained how they could impact us.
What was the team composition?
They assigned us a senior security engineer. We communicated directly with this resource.
Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?
After we fixed these vulnerabilities in-house, ScienceSoft did additional testing to confirm they no longer presented a risk to us.
How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?
We communicated via email. ScienceSoft was highly responsive and helpful.
What did you find most impressive about this company?
They were flexible with us, worked quickly, and provided good feedback.
Are there any areas for improvement?
No, not that I saw.
Following the migration, the amount of throughput doubled. ScienceSoft delivered efficient, transparent project management and scrum-style updates. The team communicated clearly, reguarly, and concisely, and they were quick to respond to feedback and fix issues.