Follow the sun

Posted November 17, 2011 at 11:00 am by ajanse in General, Infrastructure.

Earlier this year, Jitscale’s American office moved to larger premises. Bigger housing for a growing team. Our engineers across the ocean serve our U.S. clients by the well-tried Jitscale methods; they respond to the demand for outsourcing infrastructure management, a demand also clearly present in the U.S.

Not just the local market benefits from our American presence, it brings advantages for our European clients as well. After all, already for years, Jitscale supports its clients through 24/7 management of their business critical environments. Many client applications need to fulfil high availability requirements. Think, for example, of applications with continuous use during the day, such as web shops, where the slightest downtime leads to immediate loss of revenue. In other cases, such as the AMBER Alert platform used for missing children, permanent platform availability can literally be of vital importance.

It’s crucial for such platforms that maintenance and other work is, wherever possible, carried out at times most suitable for clients. This often means at night. By deploying the US team to these sorts of activities, the time difference between the Dutch and American office is used optimally, and therefore Jitscale can offer its clients even more ‘active eyes’ during the day.

Deployment of a team overseas is obviously not all that straightforward. It’s a phased and gradual process that requires a lot of dedicated time and attention. Internal documentation is drawn up in English and most communication together is, where possible, also in English.

A good system for status updates and devolution is indispensable; the teams, employed at different locations, need to know exactly what is going on, otherwise the sleep of one team will certainly be disturbed. Techniques including IP telephony and video conferencing prove to be ideal tools here.

Anyone who has ever experienced a serious jet lag will agree that time differences are usually a necessary evil. However, with a creative approach, you can also turn this to your advantage. Exactly as Jitscale shows with the ‘follow the sun’ system as described above.