Software Development Europe

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the founder, chairman and CEO of the Live Learn Innovate Foundation LLIF. Our mission is to improve lives by unlocking unique insights in personal health, nutrition, activities, environment, and wellbeing in a model which empowers individuals to aggregate, secure, own, analyze, and optionally share data for personal and/or community benefit.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Software Development Europe?

Build a cloud platform that will improve lives by unlocking unique insights in personal health, nutrition, activities, environment, and wellbeing in a model which empowers individuals to aggregate, secure, own, analyze, and optionally share data for personal and/or community benefit.

What were your goals for this project?

The tactical goal was to build a demo to fundraise and grow the team for the ultimate cloud platform that will offer personal data storage and analytics funded by opt in advertising via a nonprofit business model where members get insights from and monetize their own data.

SOLUTION

How did you select Software Development Europe?

In late June 2020, the CRO of SDEUSA reached out on Linkedin. By September first, we had an optimized team of developers to build our demo fundraising product.

SDE learned our problem, proposed a well thought out and scalable architecture, outlined a corresponding set of required skills, assembled a highly skilled team with an expert scrum master, and helped us achieve a working demo in a few months. The SDE team is now integral to our success and integral to our strategy as we move out of demo.

I highly recommend partnering with SDE to achieve your software development goals.

Describe the project in detail.

We're building an Elasticsearch based data storage and analytics platform. Elasticsearch contains the member living data (not medical data). Postgres houses user profile. Authentication is currently Google OAuth. The front end leverages AWS CloudFront and API gateway with the backend Elasticsearch accessed via AWS private link to elastic.co.

What was the team composition?

Our team was comprised of a volunteer LLIF junior and senior software developer and several strong backend and front end developers from SDE along with an SDE provided scrum master.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Within 3 months, we've got a working fundraise demo that we can take to companies to get donations to further develop the commercial offer with the ongoing support of SDE.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We had daily standup meetings and use ClickUp to collaborate and meet our goals.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

SDE helped guide as through the early process and continues to check in to adjust the team as appropriate as we navigate from heavy backend to frontend and now to voice and mobile app development.

Are there any areas for improvement?

As I mentioned to SDE leadership, I could not have imagined things going better and still can't identify areas for improvement. I'm very grateful.

BACKGROUND

Could you give a brief description of what your company does?

We are a telecom equipment vendor, and we specialize in the signaling and related portion of a network.

What is your position within the company?

I’m a director of research and development for one of the software products in the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your business goal or objective going into this project?

We are a network monitoring product, and the goals are to be successful at going orders, revenue and profit, and satisfying customers.

What was your process for selecting Software Development Europe?

We got a long-term relationship with them, and their relationship with our company predates my relationship to them. They had a contract with our company to do bug fixes and test automation prior to my selection of them, and so we chose them at the recommendation with the vice president of engineer as having skills applicable to our need.

SOLUTION

Do you think you could tell me a bit more about the project itself?

It’s a software product that, at the time that they started, was Solaris based. It also had X Windows for user interface and had a C++ real time server backend for you to gather data about the network, and then provide useful information about it. In time, it became a J2EE based application server running on Linux, converting from Solaris to Linux with the relation of database, Oracle, backend for some of the reports and applications that we have.

How long ago was the project completed?

SDE has an ongoing relationship. They had an ongoing relationship with this product three in the last year, and now they have a smaller new project that they’re working on with us to help innovate a new project that does similar things for 4G networks.

What’ was the general cost range for this one specific project with Software Development Europe?

I can’t really be sharing cost information because we have other vendors that we work with.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

As you’re working with Software Department Europe, is there anything that stood out as being special or unique compared to other vendors you might have worked with in the past?

A couple of things. One is the average engineer tended to be, in time, more senior and they tended to be more senior because they have stayed longer. They stayed with the project long term, and they grew up with us as we went through these challenges. They became leads in particular areas of the product given that seniority, and they had a personal commitment to the project because of that long-term involvement with us. They’re willing to run an extra mile to make sure our customers were satisfied, and we continue to work with them because of that commitment. Senior, long-term developers that were committed to the project on a professional and personal basis.

Is there anything that you would do slightly differently or Software Development Europe could improve on?

I think the main area of growth was as a company, they have a lot of talented young engineers. The major growth was in management planning and things of that nature, and that’s something we give feedback to the long annual basis. There’s been a lot of improvement in that area.

Would you recommend them to other people?

Yes, I would.