As early as 2300 BCE, ancient Babylonians were creating maps on clay tablets; maps have been important tools for conveying geographic information ever since. But in the subsequent years, maps haven’t changed all that much. Until now. CloudMade, the leading provider of development tools for the emerging location-based app market, is helping take maps and other location-based tools to new levels of innovation, usefulness, and sheer delight for users.

CloudMade co-founder Nick Black, one of the earliest driving forces behind the OpenStreetMap free wiki world map, saw a huge opportunity for location-based technologies. “Analysts were predicting that by 2013 there would be a billion smartphone users, and half their apps would incorporate location,” says Black. To take advantage of this expanding market opportunity, CloudMade needed a team of skilled software engineers, and they needed them fast. Within two weeks, a Cogniance team of 20 high-quality engineers was in place at CloudMade. From there, CloudMade was headed in the right direction: upward, toward success.

CloudMade’s Challenge: Put Itself on the Map

CloudMade is pioneering new ways for location services to be incorporated into websites and mobile apps, going beyond the typical concepts of maps, navigation devices, and early social media “check-in” services. CloudMade’s technology platform and tools, which draw on a crowdsourcing model for rapid evolution, enable developers to create and integrate unique location-based services into their applications, making them more appealing and useful. CloudMade also operates a location-based advertising network that developers can use to increase revenues.

Distinguishing itself in this new market was one of Cloudmade’s initial challenges. A few competitors offer pieces of what CloudMade does, but no one has replicated the entire offering. “It’s up to CloudMade to prove to the world and to developers that we add value,” says Black. “We knew that the best way to demonstrate value was to get our extensive offerings to market quickly, and for that we needed an instant team of really good software engineers.”

Complicating the company’s developmental strategy was that fact that CloudMade started its operations in London and in Menlo Park, California – two of the most competitive markets for software engineers.

“We needed to scale up quickly and well,” Black says. “We didn’t have time or a bottomless budget to support the painstaking process of trying to hire local engineers, interviewing and making decisions, and then finding out our choices were hired away by someone else offering more money.”

The Cogniance Solution: Instant Engineering Expertise

CloudMade never had to endure the hassle and expense of sifting through local engineering talent or competing with other companies for the right people. Its first engineer was from Cogniance, and within two weeks CloudMade’s Cogniance engineering team had reached 20 experts, each skilled in the technology areas most critical to CloudMade.

As CloudMade has grown, scaling the engineering team has been easy. An additional 15 software specialists have joined the Cogniance team at CloudMade in the past three years.

As a co-founder, Black manages the product management and design aspects of CloudMade’s product delivery organization. CTO Jim Brown is in charge of engineering, QA, and support. Both work with the Cogniance team, which provides CloudMade with the full software spectrum, including design, architecture, development, QA, implementation, operations, and scaling.

“Cogniance is the engineering department for CloudMade,” says Black. “They are completely integrated with our in-house operations, to the extent that we have quarterly planning and brainstorming off-sites with the whole Cogniance team.” Cogniance also is involved directly in CloudMade marketing and sales opportunities, and Cogniance manages the CloudMade website.

This level of integration differs dramatically from the usual outsourcing relationship, where outsourced talent is kept more at arm’s length from a company’s core operations.

“The talent and enthusiasm of the Cogniance engineers makes all the difference,” says Black. “With Cogniance, we can afford to have true software craftsmen on our team, while retaining the flexibility of an outsourced approach.”

The Results: High-Quality Innovation, Quickly to Market

Globally, an estimated 20,000 software developers use CloudMade tools to add location-based services to their web and mobile applications, which is catapulting the company’s reach and influence. CloudMade gets more than 1.5 million hits per day on cloud servers and is the number-one Amazon.com cloud customer in the UK. It has established partnerships with notable customers worldwide, including the White House.

“CloudMade’s success depends on our ability to rapidly launch high-quality tools that deliver real value to developers, and to innovate continually,” says Black. “The Cogniance team provides the bridge between our business goals and the fruition of those goals.”

In February 2010 in Barcelona, CloudMade received a Mobile Premier Award for its technology from the Mobile World Congress. In April 2010, CloudMade won a prestigious Open 100 award from the UK’s National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts.

“It’s gratifying to know how our services have contributed to both the technology and business accolades CloudMade has received,” says Michael Shraybman, president of Cogniance. “Our Kiev team celebrated right along with CloudMade when they won each of their awards – that’s how strongly we feel part of their core operations.”

The widespread adoption of CloudMade tools, and the industry recognition its technology has received, highlight the value of its Cogniance engineering team, whose world-class software craftsmanship and business-centric engineering expertise has helped propel CloudMade’s success.

“Without Cogniance, it would have taken us six months to accomplish what Cogniance did in one month, with a caliber of skill we couldn’t have replicated, and for about three times the price,” says Black. “We simply could not do in-house what Cogniance does, and we’re proud to have them on our side.”

Challenge

• Assemble a first-rate engineering team quickly, in places where software engineering demand exceeds supply
• Reach critical mass fast and cost-effectively
• Educate software developers about how location-based services can add real value to their applications

Solution

• From CloudMade’s inception, its core engineering team has consisted exclusively of Cogniance engineers
• Cogniance provides CloudMade with end-to-end software services, including design, architecture, development, QA, implementation, operations, and scaling
• Cogniance personnel manage the CloudMade web presence and its location-based advertising network

Benefits

• By partnering with Cogniance, CloudMade’s engineering team grew from zero to 20 skilled software engineers in only two weeks
• Cogniance’s Eastern European-based engineering experts allowed CloudMade to get innovative, world-class location-based services tools to market quickly, with significant cost efficiencies
• Developers worldwide have embraced the well-engineered CloudMade offerings, with approximately 20,000 using CloudMade tools to create successful web and mobile applications with location-based services
• The quality and usefulness of CloudMade’s innovative tools have been validated through numerous prestigious industry and technology awards

http://cloudmade.com/