IGNW: Re-Engineering DevOps

Phil Taylor, VP of engineering

IGNW was known in the industry for its contract software development practices before it was acquired by Andrew Cadwell, the Managing Partner and CEO in late 2016. He along with Dean Bergan, the Managing Partner and CTO of IGNW, had the vision to enable the next-generation personal services delivery. To this end, the duo collaborated with Phil Taylor, the VP of engineering of IGNW, and created a DevOps business strategy to facilitate greater outcomes to businesses. Interacting with the clients, the trio deduced that there was an urgent need to deliver DevOps services from their private data center to the cloud. They soon developed a private data center practice and leveraged technologies to execute DevOps strategies within the data center. They also started a modern software delivery strategy to complement their DevOps practice. The company's software delivery focuses on next-generation software concepts that can align with the client's cloud strategy.

Today, IGNW uses its deep technical insights, local market knowledge, and a strong partner network and reputation to create exceptional business outcomes for people and companies. Below are the insights shared by Taylor about how his company delivers DevOps simplicity and what does the future hold for IGNW.

How has IGNW evolved since the acquisition?

We strive to make businesses agile through DevOps. But, for DevOps to be successful, you must bring in the culture of collaboration and continuous delivery, accelerated by automation. Looking deeper, DevOps should be more than just software and automation, and that's where our value proposition lies. We first partnered with Cisco at a time when the networking giant was transitioning into a software company. Soon, we started to collaborate with other big companies. We are founded on the idea of open source, so we only partnered with the companies that can offer open APIs such that it becomes easy for customers to build their custom solution using our technology and meet their unique business goals.

Over the years, we have leveraged Google Cloud as they are the best cloud technology providers in the market and are driving huge success. Our association with Google Cloud aligns well with our business strategy, and we have gained huge traction through this partnership. Having been named as a Google Managed Partner in the Googles Services Track recently, IGNW is proud to be part of the Google Cloud ecosystem. With this accreditation, IGNW is in a better position to help companies drive their Google Cloud ROI by simplifying cloud migration and achieving IT optimization through the Internet giant’s unique cloud services.

We are founded on the idea of open source, so we only partnered with the companies that can offer open APIs such that it becomes easy for customers to build their custom solution using our technology and meet their unique business goals

Please shed some light on IGNW's DevOps initiatives.

The way we practice DevOps is different from other vendors existing in the marketplace today. We stand for a cultural and technical shift in the way that we deliver the software and platform. On the cultural side, we deliver consulting by leveraging our partnership with DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA). They provide Impact performance with a metrics-driven continuous improvement cycle customized for an organization. This helps our clients to understand their unique strengths and weaknesses. It also shows them where to focus resources to deliver rapid and lasting improvement in the delivery capability of their digital and IT teams in a precise manner.

We also work on collaborative workshops with the clients to make them understand modern techniques and technologies in this area. The workshop contains training sessions that range from branching the source code to automating their QA environment and the need for testing. Whether the client is a beginner in DevOps or a pro, IGNW’s DevOps consulting can help them quickly transform the value of IT by improving outcomes in terms of people, processes, and tools. IGNW’s service goes beyond simple products and implementation. We offer real collaboration, true velocity, and culture-based outcomes.

Who is IGNW's typical client?

The best part of our services is that it can be used by any organization. We work with everyone from Fortune 50 customers to mid-market companies to startups. We also gain a lot of traction from the healthcare and financial verticals as they want to leverage the compliance benefit that we provide. Over the years, we have assisted many large global businesses and medium-sized firms who are using technology as a competitive advantage and are seeking the best people and processes to execute on their vision.

In an instance, we helped a customer that was faced with difficulties in dealing with maintaining traditional systems. They were trying to move it to the cloud but didn't have the expertise for the cloud. We re-engineered their current solution from the scratch, taking what they had in their production system and re-building it through our DevOps practices. This provided them with a cloud-based solution that was backed-up automatically and could be restored within 15- 30 minutes.

How does IGNW's strategic and ecosystem partnership help in the DevOps practices?

On the strategic side, we have support from our partners in building competency. We are strategically aligned with our partners to help them deliver their solution in the market and in return get equipped to mitigate any client predicament. Further, on the ecosystem side, partners assist us to build our DevOps approach on top of their technology, application, and infrastructure.

Tell us about IGNW’ future for the next 12-18 months.

Within the next 12 months, we plan to expand rapidly and double the size of our company. We are experiencing relentless growth and our biggest challenge is to expand geographically while keeping pace with the customer demands. We are also moving into the Texas and Seattle market by collaborating with more new partners.