FROM humble beginnings in 2014, software development company Sinov8 is now used by hundreds of companies across South Africa with more than 500 000 properties managed on its various platforms.
That’s according to co-founder Werner Hanekom, who said that after running a residential real estate rental business for seven years, they realised there was an urgent need for proper systems and processes to manage rentals and create scalable businesses.
This prompted him and his partners to leave property management behind and use their industry experience and technical skills to start building the solutions they believed the market needed. They also wanted to change the way rental agents perceive themselves and how they are perceived by their clients: landlords and tenants.
He said that due to the rapid pace at which their products are growing, they need to constantly evaluate and optimise their platform to be ready to scale while continuing to provide reliable performance.
He cited the example of a recent challenge the company faced regarding two of its solutions built on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud: an end-to-end rental management solution and another for inspections and maintenance management.
“Both solutions are growing at a rapid pace and the platforms need to keep up with demand. But closely monitoring and optimising these platforms were becoming a full-time job. Rather than focusing on monitoring and platform optimization, Sinov8 prefers to use their expertise and time to continue innovating on the software side but still wanted security, performance, and scalability to be closely monitored and improved daily.”
This is where Cloud consulting company, Synthesis Software Technologies entered the picture.
“I saw Synthesis were providing AWS Well-Architected Reviews and that’s when I first engaged them,” said Hanekom. “They started looking into our environment and they made some particularly good suggestions early on while implementing these reviews. We got excellent value from it. The reviews helped us to create a path to ensure that our products are scalable and secure in the long run.”
After some more discussions and planning, Sinov8 partnered with Synthesis to become the company’s managed service provider (MSP) to take responsibility for these crucial aspects of their platforms.
Scalability
The agreement is an SLA-based service that ensures that all of Sinov8’s systems are up and running as the company scales. Whether Sinov8 takes on hundreds of companies within the next week, month or year, they have ensured platform stability and pro-active implementation of the latest AWS security, scalability, and related technologies.
“As Amazon brings out a lot of services, we want to make sure that we stay up to date with the latest technologies. That is something that Synthesis is really going to help us with.”
Hanekom said Sinov8 has just started its managed service journey. “At this stage it’s more about seeing where we can go, seeing that we’re going to be able to make sure that we are creating scalable and reliable products. It’s really been about getting a lot of knowledge into our company from Synthesis, and it’s been great engaging with the teams and learning from them as well.”
Synthesis Cloud Practise Lead, Naseem Ahmed said: “The best part of my job is getting to work and build with innovators like Sinov8. They are humble, smart and customer driven. They love what they do, and it shows.”
