Waterbear Cloud

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the president and CEO of a company that produces industrial wireless sensor technologies. We focus on SMEs who are being left behind in the industrial revolution, or what’s called “Industry 4.0.”

We remove barriers to sensors, gateways, and cloud applications to maintain and monitor these companies’ machines. We work to allow them to take advantage of state-of-the-art predictive analytics technologies.

What challenge were you trying to address with Waterbear Cloud?

We don’t have the internal expertise when it comes to cloud development. We’re primarily a hardware engineering company, so we don’t focus as much on software. We hired Waterbear Cloud to build out our initial platform which allows for the secure transfer of our customer’s data through our gateway.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The first phase of the project was to build the architecture that allows us to house companies’ data. You have a customer and a gateway (which is connected to a number on one of our wireless sensors). The system has to be able to ingest that data and recognize which gateways they’re coming from. They’ll then categorize that data, which feeds into a larger database.

The second part of the project revolved around UX/UI. We wanted to show this data in a way that’s meaningful to people who are operating and servicing these machines. On top of that, the challenge was to establish alarms to thresholds, when the system alert the operator or maintenance member to preempt a failure of some kind.

We’re currently in the initial steps of getting our key customers rolled over to the platform we created. We’ll be monitoring some water turbines using municipal water supply systems, as well as forestry facilities where the risk of explosion is high. Hopefully, by the end of the year, anybody can pick up one of our sensors to use as a plug-and-play for industrial systems.

What is the team composition?

We primarily engage with 3 people. There’s the lead developer, the architect specialist, and one of the partners, who oversee project management.

How did you come to work with Waterbear Cloud?

I’ve known one of the founders for a long time. We were employees at the same company a long time ago, back when we were developing Linux operating systems. I knew that he had extensive technical skills, and so when he started his own company, I kept him in the back of my mind.

When we decided to look for a partner, we explored several options. We chose Waterbear Cloud since a few of their teammates had the exact technical skills we were looking for.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve probably spent around $45,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2020, and the project is ongoing.

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

We’ve been very happy with them, as they’ve seamlessly integrated into our team. They’ve had no problem understanding and adhering to all of our deliverables and milestones. I think we’re more or less ready to deploy the solution they helped us build.

How did Waterbear Cloud perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re quite flexible. I’ve worked with vendors who insist on following their own processes and methodologies, but Waterbear Cloud have been able to modify their workflow to suit our needs.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were quick to grasp our needs and challenges. We didn’t have to explain at length what we’re trying to do and why. I’ve worked with software companies who focus too much on what they do, without understanding how their output fits in with our hardware, firmware, and embedded systems. We were able to bridge that gap quite smoothly with them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, nothing really comes to mind. They could always invoice me for less, but I think they operate at a very fair rate. I don’t mind paying what I do for the quality of their support and service.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the Chief Technology Officer at Corridor Interactive Inc.

For what projects/services did your company hire Waterbear Cloud?

In 2019 the Corridor online learning system was migrated to a cloud infrastructure on Amazon Web Services (AWS). With only a small IT team on staff the infrastructure it was difficult to manage and support the infrastructure and there were no in house staff available to implement additional improvements like automatic scaling and no downtime deployments.

Managed service providers were extremely costly. Waterbear Cloud's services were very competitive on price and met our needs for managed services to support, enhance, and maintain our AWS infrastructure.

After the initial migration to Waterbear Cloud's managed server infrastructure on AWS, Waterbear Cloud implemented automatic scaling, automated server upgrades, and no downtime deployments.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goals for the project were to implement managed services to provide support and maintenance of our AWS server infrastructure and to implement automatic scaling, automated server upgrades, and no downtime deployments of our online learning system.

How did you select Waterbear Cloud?

We solicited a quote from a local provider of managed services that and the costs was significantly higher than Waterbear Cloud. We also talked with several other larger providers that wouldn't deal with a smaller company of our size.

We gave up on it for awhile assuming that there wasn't a provider that fit our requirements. Sometime later Waterbear Cloud reached out to us and they proved to be a perfect fit for our business and requirements at a much more reasonable cost than the larger providers.

Describe the project in detail.

Once we selected Waterbear Cloud we had several meetings with them to discuss our requirements. Waterbear Cloud created a Statement of Work and developed a migration plan with pricing.

Over the period of a month we worked with the staff at Waterbear Cloud to migrate our systems to their managed infrastructure which is a layer on top of AWS that simplifies management of our AWS resources.

After completing that migration, we started a second phase of the project where Waterbear Cloud implemented automatic scaling of our infrastructure, automated sever patching, and no downtime deployments.

What was the team composition?

The Sales team and a founder were involved at the start of the project to define the Statement of Work and migration plan. During the implementation phases of the project, we worked primarily with one technical infrastructure staff member with additional support from a second staff member.

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

After migrating to Waterbear Cloud we were able to refocus our technical staff towards platform enhancements and away from infrastructure support and maintenance allowing us to pursue new initiatives to grow and develop our unique service offerings.

In addition, the implementation of automatic scaling allows us to position our business for variable growth without incurring new capital expenditures or needing to add internal IT & DevOps staff.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Our team and the Waterbear Cloud team worked very effectively together. The communication was exemplary and the technical knowledge top notch.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Waterbear Cloud provides top notch managed AWS services for a very competitive price.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Waterbear Cloud's daily management and support of our infrastructure since migrating to their platform has been excellent. Although we have no to date experience any issues with support, I do suggest that Waterbear Cloud ensures there is sufficient technical transfer between various staff members to ensure the support levels remain superior when staff members are on vacation.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of the Green Channel, a streaming service that streams environmental content around the world.

What challenge were you trying to address with Waterbear Cloud?

We wanted someone with expertise in AWS to create an interface between our service and AWS.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We needed to broadcast our service around the world. Because we’re a small startup, we needed to piggyback on the servers of AWS, so there would be no lag when subscribers from international markets were streaming our content.

I found that Kevin (Co-Founder) had that experience, so we enlisted him to take care of the coding needs of the channel to make sure our service was stable, scalable, and usable around the world.

What is the team composition?

Mainly, we work with Kevin and Karen (Co-Founder). Karen acted as the technical coordinator between Kevin and our WordPress expert and our app developers.

How did you come to work with Waterbear Cloud?

It was a bit of a fluke. I was at a friend’s party and was introduced to them.

How much have you invested with them?

I believe around $100,000–$150,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our engagement with Waterbear Cloud started in June 2016.

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

It’s been excellent. The team continues providing AWS support as we expand the channel. If there’s a problem with the service, Kevin’s very quick to determine what it is and implement the fixes.

There are always so many moving parts with a streaming service. Every time we do an upgrade or redesign, there’s a whole host of things that could go wrong. Kevin is good at pinpointing what that is. Generally speaking, it’s been pretty stable, and we’ve had little issues. Typically, when we do testing and catch most things. More often than not, it’s something else impacting the system and not something we’ve done.

How did Waterbear Cloud perform from a project management standpoint?

I haven’t had any angst about anything. I’ve trusted Kevin right from the beginning. We communicate through emails and texts. They’re both effective channels. If I text, it’s usually more urgent. We have that unwritten code between us.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re reliable and trustworthy. If a client isn’t tech-savvy, they need someone that’s able to pinpoint and communicate clearly what they need to do and give a relatively clear idea of cost.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It’s more on my side. Having enough capital to execute everything would make things go smoother. I went in a bit undercapitalized and still managed to get quite far advanced with where we’re at. We’re close to breaking out.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be well-prepared. The projects that involve technical requirements are usually a lot bigger than you think. I know I went into this thinking it was going to be a straightforward website, but it soon became clear to me that the scope was going to grow substantially. Be prepared for that.