I’m late getting around to writing this, but I figure now is as good a time as any. Last year, I left Red Hat after 10 years of service. I have nothing but good things to say about Red Hat. If you’d asked me, I would have told you there are very few opportunities that I’d think warrant leaving Red Hat, but here we are.
Ten years is a long time. Ten years is a very long time. I grew up through the ranks of Red Hat Consulting, and by the time I departed I found myself establishing training programs for the engineers servicing customers in the field - just as I had done earlier in my career. To be honest, it was time. Aliya was finishing up her final leg in medical residency - meaning we could handle a tiny bit more “risk” - and I just couldn’t resist the itch to get closer to the startup world. It just so happened that the guy that hired me into Amentra (a consultancy later acquired by Red Hat) had recently started a consulting firm. Perfect opportunity for me to join in, right?
No
…or at least so I thought.
Consulting just didn’t seem to be a fit for me in my mind. The hours are usually long, the gratitude is minimal, and the odds that I would be working with the latest and greatest technology I thought would be slim.
No thanks.
I’d rather try my hand at building a product. I could do this myself, or maybe join a small shop with an interesting product/tech stack and help out. Well simply put, I wasn’t able to find the right opportunity for me, but I knew I needed a change so I reached out to my old boss anyway just to make sure I covered my bases. The more I tuned into what was going on with his company and the more I spoke with him, the more sense it began to make for me to give his business serious consideration. Surprisingly, what I recall being quickly impressed with was the blogging and writing that his team posted online. One of the traits that I’ve noticed in the technology companies that I’m most interested in following is a willingness and ability shown by engineers to write about their work. All startups that I find intriguing have engineers that seem to enjoy sharing new discoveries and every day happenings at their companies. It’s actually quite common to find blogs tied to the websites of product companies these days. What’s pretty rare is to find that sort of DNA in a consulting group.
I was interested in what I’d seen.
I saw Levvel Consulting…
Levvel is a full service IT consulting firm. Levvel prides itself on being able to help startups scale like enterprise heavyweights, and helping the larger enterprises to innovate like tech startups. Levvel is unique in that the company is led by both big industry veterans that have held prominent roles at Fortune 100 companies, as well as many technology startup founders that understand how to make the most of resources and are accustomed to living on the cutting edge of technology and operating in environments where uncertainty is a certainty. Many of the folks employed by Levvel have experience in both worlds, which is a huge advantage in having the unique ability to bring fresh perspective to customers.
Levvel focuses in 4 practice areas:
- Application Development
- Product Innovation
- Payments and
- DevOps
Application Development
Having a strong application development capability is central to any IT services group. Levvel has a wide range of talent spanning all the way from working full stack Node and RoR developers to having consultants with 10+ years of development with COBOL. I’m accustomed to and I’ve been a part of consulting groups with strong application developers - nothing new to see here - but looking beyond the application development skills at Levvel there more targeted capabilities and offerings that are quickly uncovered that allow the team to stand out.
Product Innovation
The Product Innovation practice is really where Levvel begins to tie the “full service” descriptor into their offerings. In my former lives, we’ve done an excellent job as a systems integrator and with custom development, but when it came to design and UI/UX we simply didn’t have the chops. Levvel has the unique capability to both manage end to end product development cycles and provide the creativity and technical skills needed to solve business and user experience problems. Levvel employs a first class team of designers and front-end engineers that understand how to kickstart innovation processes and bring visions to reality.
Payments Practice
Led by a group of leaders that have been significant contributors internal to big banks (Bank of America, Wells Fargo, etc.), Levvel’s Payments Practice is a great example of an ability to provide deeper expertise and implementation chops than the bigger IT firms. Here are some of the areas that Levvel can provide assistance:
- Payment Solution Architecture (for Mobile Startups)
- Strategic Analysis for Issuers & 3rd-Party Wallets
- Custom Payment Gateways
- eCommerce Tokenization
- P2P Payments and
- Blockchain
The insider knowledge that Levvel can provide any payments related initiative, bringing together perspective from issuers, networks, processors, gateways, merchants, 3rd-party enablers and the like is invaluable.
DevOps
Levvel also has a strong DevOps practice. DevOps is central to Digital Transformation strategies across industries. Without going too much into Levvel’s interpretation of DevOps (most places have their own - trust me), here are a few of the process and technical areas addressed through the Levvel DevOps practice:
- Infrastructure Automation - Design & Delivery
- Continuous Integration & Continuous Development
- Software Development Methodology Transformation
- Container Management Solutions and
- Platform-as-a-Service capabilities
Levvel is a certified partner with technology companies that provide the very best tooling in these areas including:
So in March of 2016 I decided to take the leap and join Levvel in helping businesses build better software. The team is as capable as billed, and I’m excited to do everything I can to push the company forward. It seems that as much as I fight it, IT Services continues to make its way back into my life. I figure I’ll embrace it and RWTW.