Cloud technologies from cloudless Macedonia or managing a B2B online project remotely. Part 1
Like most Russians living outside the Russian Federation, I occasionally feel the need to talk about the difficult fate of an IT specialist who moved with his family to another country (in my case, this is a little Balkan Macedonia) and therefore, as an IT specialist, I decided to sublimate my experiences and sensations here, on the Megamind, in the form of an adventure and near-technical post, and not in the LiveJournal blog of an expat real estate consultant decorated with beach photos with lips and nails.
A small introduction: for several years I lived and worked in Moscow in a large communications holding, was engaged in the development of cloud business and the launch of new projects, and, according to management and colleagues, did it successfully. After five years of intense cloud-based work in the office, the understanding gradually came that the clouds are white-mane, virtual and working through the Internet not only from the client but also from the project manager, which means I can do just like clients everything remotely - manage, update, attract and monetize. What, in fact, took place the conversation with the management of the company, which after some deliberation, approved my idea: moving to a new place while retaining all the functions and obligations of a permanent employee to improve work efficiency by optimizing weather and living conditions. Long live BBA and SaaS in all their manifestations.
')
I foresee the question: why Macedonia? Here you can answer either very quickly or very long. I will answer quickly: the Balkans are the best place to live for tired Russian IT people from the point of view of climate, mentality, proximity to the Motherland, and Macedonia is the very heart of the Balkans, a country with very loyal migration policies, developed communications, a wonderful climate, not spoiled by tourists and downshifters. , calm country for a calm thoughtful life and quiet distant work.
In short, in the summer of 2014, the whole family landed in Skopje, the capital of Macedonia, issued the necessary documents, rented an apartment and just a couple of days I continued to work with my cloud brainchild - AltegroCloud mobile virtual office - from a Macedonian IP address.
We regularly talk about the project in our blog on Habré and I will not delve into near-advertising thoughts about all the advantages of integrating mobile communications, CRM and virtual PBX. Perhaps, I would only note that the technical backgroup of the project, the legal basis, the launch and testing of the beta would hardly have been possible remotely, the basis of Cloud is a complex inter-operator agreement with one of the telecom operators, which I “punched” for a long time For almost a year, being in Moscow, and then another half a year, my colleagues and I studied the market in order to understand where to move the unprecedented hitherto cool - special FMC SIM cards for corporate communications.
Some IT facts about Macedonia:
- an active Internet audience, at the level of 50-55% of the population hang on social networks daily, vibe and facebook are our everything
- excellent 3G / 4G coverage, unlimited package of minutes + Internet can be purchased from local T-Mobile for 20 euros per month
- optics have been installed in new houses, xADSL is still found in old houses, I buy anlim 10/10 mbps for 12 euros a month, ping to Russian IPs is too big, in ChNN it reaches 100 ms, because the route to Russia, for some reason, is zigzagging via Serbia-Bulgaria, but everything runs to Europe just fine
- the almost complete absence of local online projects, the whole of Macedonia uses a Facebookbook-vibeers-aliexpress, no own online shops, no payment systems, no pizza order via the Internet either, IP telephony is used exclusively by geeks
- the reverent attitude of IT-officials and IT-community to all high-tech, mobile and virtual, while in the country telecom is tightly regulated and monopolized, it is impossible to buy a virtual SIP phone number for reasonable money, as well as officially make inter-operator interface locally
Macedonia in photos:
View of the capital - Skopje, if something happens in the country online, then it happens only here, for an active digital life, the advanced Macedonians move to the capital
The surroundings of Skopje, mountains, mountains and once again mountains. After hard work, you can roll away to a mountain river in half an hour on a bike for digital meditation on a new feature in your client’s personal account.
The pearl of Macedonia is Lake Ohrid, a great place for downshifting. You can rent an apartment for 150 euros per month and code around the clock, admiring the chic sunsets
Balkan vitamins of 50 euro cents per kilogram, not sprayed with chemicals, are very useful as an effective tool for understanding the captured bugs in the project
Digital tags in Skopje denoting high-loaded transport channels and warning against overflow of signal traffic during peak hours
After a couple of months of living and comprehending, it became clear that it was not possible to scale up the initial ideas of Russian SaaS on Macedonian land and start offering digital happiness to local businesses for little money. The chances of selling a cloud PBX in the Balkans are equal to the chances of selling a ten-step PBX in Silicon Valley. It just does not need anyone. Well, it's even simpler, there is no need to develop new markets, we will more actively promote unique technologies on Russian soil, albeit from a Macedonian IP address.
Even before leaving Russia, I compiled a list of works for myself that I would perform regularly, and indicated that my working time corresponds to the working time at the head office in Moscow, I decided to use Skype, corporate email, corporate IP telephony for communications (my own platform ) and sim card MTS with the connected option "Zero without borders."
I suspect that the majority of AltegroCloud partners and customers still do not know that I moved to another country, since both the mobile number and the corporate internal telephone have been preserved. The secretary just as quickly transfers calls to me, and clients offer to drive up to the office to talk, for obvious reasons, I don’t go to negotiations, but I ask my colleagues to go, which doesn’t change the essence of the matter - the desired results are achieved. In the end, the client is not so important who leads his contract. If necessary, we collect video conferences in a meeting room where I can see and hear a new client partner, and they in turn can hear and see me, thinking that I am somewhere on a business trip.
My remote participation in the life of the project is about this set of functions:
- development strategy, inventing and elaboration of new features. Moving clearly went to the benefit: landscapes and natural food contribute to active thinking processes. Macedonia, thanks for the creative atmosphere and mountain oxygen.
- search for partners for the project (one of the priority areas for the development of sales - sales through an affiliate network). Here, too, everything is shaping up, since all the key issues are perfectly solved online, and when you need to sign an agreement or hold a meeting, the sales colleagues are happy to help, and my competencies are no longer required. Again, I suspect that none of the newly found partners did not understand that they were communicating with a remote employee. Thanks to the Macedonian Internet for a stable link and a small ping
- communication with key customers. There are no problems, as in the previous paragraph. A call to a mobile client - always a call to a mobile client, no matter where you call from, it is important that you hear well and you answer calls to a Russian number. Macedonian 3G provides such an opportunity, even if I decided to move closer to the mountain beauties to the camp for a week, and MTS works out “Zero without Borders” - it’s not enough to keep within 10 free incoming minutes.
- sales support and reporting. Here too there are enough tools: cloudy CRM to help. Sellers get deals, I see and control them, I see statistics too, and I can evaluate problem points and make the necessary analytics. Kicking sellers with a letter to the internal mailing list with the addition of a copy of the CEO - a method that was used in the office. In a word, there are no problems here.
- marketing and promotion. It has always been and will be a fully online process, with the help of a marketer and a team of young developers who I haven’t seen in person even when I lived in Moscow. These guys will remain so for me green circles in Skype. And here, remote Macedonia is doing its best.
- reporting to management. Difficult and energy-intensive business, weekly we hold meetings in Skype with video. For myself, I realized that when the authorities on the other side of the monitor - you feel much more comfortable, the main thing is that the authorities tolerate your virtuality and distance. My tolerance for now. Again - thanks to Macedonia for not being Seychelles. My living in the Seychelles would certainly cause a slight rejection of my work colleagues. And so: I am somewhere in the mountains, and certainly I don’t drink pin colada, lounging in a deck chair under a palm tree.
The first attempts to work from home, and not to rent an office, ended miserably - the atmosphere is completely inactive, the tea and coffee temptations and the always-on TV with cartoons for the child completely discourage the desire to work, and sometimes frankly interfere: the baby crying during the telephone announcement of the project does not add creativity presentations. I decided to find and rent an office. In Skopje, this is completely easy and quite inexpensive. True, I decided not to look for simple ways, but to go the way of the greatest resistance - to apply in the Macedonian business incubator in order to be in the right environment, get access to the right community, and at the same time learn some Macedonian.
The application was accepted and approved, and now our project has one more plus in its karma: an additional office in Eastern Europe, 50 mbps optics before the threshold, constant themed parties and events. I feel in the midst of Eastern European events, which adds a positive to the already positive environment.
This is what my office center in Moscow looked like
This is what my office center in Skopje looks like.
That's how we have inside (a tennis table as a bonus, as well as a coffee machine and all office equipment)
I observe this look when I leave the office to walk a bit (“pazua” in Macedonian)
Macedonian colleagues from the neighboring office are working with enthusiasm
Their Russian colleagues in the AltegroCloud office also work with enthusiasm
It can be seen that the atmosphere is similar, but I am watching from the window mountains, pines and cypresses, and our salesman Oleg is next door to the high-rise building and the edge of the Ostankino television tower.
Near the Macedonian office live peacocks, which sometimes come to talk and smoke a couple of cigarettes. Peacocks are very revered in Macedonia and they can often be found in parks or near Orthodox churches. Peacocks create a positive much more than colleagues from the neighboring office in Moscow, who also sometimes come to smoke.
With peacocks, we spend time with coffee and a cigarette in such a smoking room (in Moscow, the building owner forbade smoking on the premises of the office center and the smoking room is now on the porch, almost on the road)
I began to fully understand the advantages of my position at the end of October last year, when the first snow fell in Moscow and the Sun shone in Skopje. It was on that day that the good colleagues sent a photo of our office on Star Boulevard, and I took pictures of my office in retaliation and sent them. That's what happened.
Behind the narrative, while I deliberately leave the financial and economic aspects of distant work in Macedonia, I will describe it in the next post, which I hope will appear soon after our marketer Eugenia reads this post and gives her opinion. However, she will do it solely for informational purposes, since the story about Macedonia is the cry of my soul, and not the marketing need of the project (well, or almost no need)
In order to add positive post another photo of the Oskop sunset, in my opinion this is also the end of October
The financial and economic continuation (with food prices, communal tariffs, the cost of renting an office and housing, and generally the cost of living in Macedonia) follows.
A small introduction: for several years I lived and worked in Moscow in a large communications holding, was engaged in the development of cloud business and the launch of new projects, and, according to management and colleagues, did it successfully. After five years of intense cloud-based work in the office, the understanding gradually came that the clouds are white-mane, virtual and working through the Internet not only from the client but also from the project manager, which means I can do just like clients everything remotely - manage, update, attract and monetize. What, in fact, took place the conversation with the management of the company, which after some deliberation, approved my idea: moving to a new place while retaining all the functions and obligations of a permanent employee to improve work efficiency by optimizing weather and living conditions. Long live BBA and SaaS in all their manifestations.
')
I foresee the question: why Macedonia? Here you can answer either very quickly or very long. I will answer quickly: the Balkans are the best place to live for tired Russian IT people from the point of view of climate, mentality, proximity to the Motherland, and Macedonia is the very heart of the Balkans, a country with very loyal migration policies, developed communications, a wonderful climate, not spoiled by tourists and downshifters. , calm country for a calm thoughtful life and quiet distant work.
In short, in the summer of 2014, the whole family landed in Skopje, the capital of Macedonia, issued the necessary documents, rented an apartment and just a couple of days I continued to work with my cloud brainchild - AltegroCloud mobile virtual office - from a Macedonian IP address.
We regularly talk about the project in our blog on Habré and I will not delve into near-advertising thoughts about all the advantages of integrating mobile communications, CRM and virtual PBX. Perhaps, I would only note that the technical backgroup of the project, the legal basis, the launch and testing of the beta would hardly have been possible remotely, the basis of Cloud is a complex inter-operator agreement with one of the telecom operators, which I “punched” for a long time For almost a year, being in Moscow, and then another half a year, my colleagues and I studied the market in order to understand where to move the unprecedented hitherto cool - special FMC SIM cards for corporate communications.
Some IT facts about Macedonia:
- an active Internet audience, at the level of 50-55% of the population hang on social networks daily, vibe and facebook are our everything
- excellent 3G / 4G coverage, unlimited package of minutes + Internet can be purchased from local T-Mobile for 20 euros per month
- optics have been installed in new houses, xADSL is still found in old houses, I buy anlim 10/10 mbps for 12 euros a month, ping to Russian IPs is too big, in ChNN it reaches 100 ms, because the route to Russia, for some reason, is zigzagging via Serbia-Bulgaria, but everything runs to Europe just fine
- the almost complete absence of local online projects, the whole of Macedonia uses a Facebookbook-vibeers-aliexpress, no own online shops, no payment systems, no pizza order via the Internet either, IP telephony is used exclusively by geeks
- the reverent attitude of IT-officials and IT-community to all high-tech, mobile and virtual, while in the country telecom is tightly regulated and monopolized, it is impossible to buy a virtual SIP phone number for reasonable money, as well as officially make inter-operator interface locally
Macedonia in photos:
View of the capital - Skopje, if something happens in the country online, then it happens only here, for an active digital life, the advanced Macedonians move to the capital
The surroundings of Skopje, mountains, mountains and once again mountains. After hard work, you can roll away to a mountain river in half an hour on a bike for digital meditation on a new feature in your client’s personal account.
The pearl of Macedonia is Lake Ohrid, a great place for downshifting. You can rent an apartment for 150 euros per month and code around the clock, admiring the chic sunsets
Balkan vitamins of 50 euro cents per kilogram, not sprayed with chemicals, are very useful as an effective tool for understanding the captured bugs in the project
Digital tags in Skopje denoting high-loaded transport channels and warning against overflow of signal traffic during peak hours
After a couple of months of living and comprehending, it became clear that it was not possible to scale up the initial ideas of Russian SaaS on Macedonian land and start offering digital happiness to local businesses for little money. The chances of selling a cloud PBX in the Balkans are equal to the chances of selling a ten-step PBX in Silicon Valley. It just does not need anyone. Well, it's even simpler, there is no need to develop new markets, we will more actively promote unique technologies on Russian soil, albeit from a Macedonian IP address.
Even before leaving Russia, I compiled a list of works for myself that I would perform regularly, and indicated that my working time corresponds to the working time at the head office in Moscow, I decided to use Skype, corporate email, corporate IP telephony for communications (my own platform ) and sim card MTS with the connected option "Zero without borders."
I suspect that the majority of AltegroCloud partners and customers still do not know that I moved to another country, since both the mobile number and the corporate internal telephone have been preserved. The secretary just as quickly transfers calls to me, and clients offer to drive up to the office to talk, for obvious reasons, I don’t go to negotiations, but I ask my colleagues to go, which doesn’t change the essence of the matter - the desired results are achieved. In the end, the client is not so important who leads his contract. If necessary, we collect video conferences in a meeting room where I can see and hear a new client partner, and they in turn can hear and see me, thinking that I am somewhere on a business trip.
My remote participation in the life of the project is about this set of functions:
- development strategy, inventing and elaboration of new features. Moving clearly went to the benefit: landscapes and natural food contribute to active thinking processes. Macedonia, thanks for the creative atmosphere and mountain oxygen.
- search for partners for the project (one of the priority areas for the development of sales - sales through an affiliate network). Here, too, everything is shaping up, since all the key issues are perfectly solved online, and when you need to sign an agreement or hold a meeting, the sales colleagues are happy to help, and my competencies are no longer required. Again, I suspect that none of the newly found partners did not understand that they were communicating with a remote employee. Thanks to the Macedonian Internet for a stable link and a small ping
- communication with key customers. There are no problems, as in the previous paragraph. A call to a mobile client - always a call to a mobile client, no matter where you call from, it is important that you hear well and you answer calls to a Russian number. Macedonian 3G provides such an opportunity, even if I decided to move closer to the mountain beauties to the camp for a week, and MTS works out “Zero without Borders” - it’s not enough to keep within 10 free incoming minutes.
- sales support and reporting. Here too there are enough tools: cloudy CRM to help. Sellers get deals, I see and control them, I see statistics too, and I can evaluate problem points and make the necessary analytics. Kicking sellers with a letter to the internal mailing list with the addition of a copy of the CEO - a method that was used in the office. In a word, there are no problems here.
- marketing and promotion. It has always been and will be a fully online process, with the help of a marketer and a team of young developers who I haven’t seen in person even when I lived in Moscow. These guys will remain so for me green circles in Skype. And here, remote Macedonia is doing its best.
- reporting to management. Difficult and energy-intensive business, weekly we hold meetings in Skype with video. For myself, I realized that when the authorities on the other side of the monitor - you feel much more comfortable, the main thing is that the authorities tolerate your virtuality and distance. My tolerance for now. Again - thanks to Macedonia for not being Seychelles. My living in the Seychelles would certainly cause a slight rejection of my work colleagues. And so: I am somewhere in the mountains, and certainly I don’t drink pin colada, lounging in a deck chair under a palm tree.
The first attempts to work from home, and not to rent an office, ended miserably - the atmosphere is completely inactive, the tea and coffee temptations and the always-on TV with cartoons for the child completely discourage the desire to work, and sometimes frankly interfere: the baby crying during the telephone announcement of the project does not add creativity presentations. I decided to find and rent an office. In Skopje, this is completely easy and quite inexpensive. True, I decided not to look for simple ways, but to go the way of the greatest resistance - to apply in the Macedonian business incubator in order to be in the right environment, get access to the right community, and at the same time learn some Macedonian.
The application was accepted and approved, and now our project has one more plus in its karma: an additional office in Eastern Europe, 50 mbps optics before the threshold, constant themed parties and events. I feel in the midst of Eastern European events, which adds a positive to the already positive environment.
This is what my office center in Moscow looked like
This is what my office center in Skopje looks like.
That's how we have inside (a tennis table as a bonus, as well as a coffee machine and all office equipment)
I observe this look when I leave the office to walk a bit (“pazua” in Macedonian)
Macedonian colleagues from the neighboring office are working with enthusiasm
Their Russian colleagues in the AltegroCloud office also work with enthusiasm
It can be seen that the atmosphere is similar, but I am watching from the window mountains, pines and cypresses, and our salesman Oleg is next door to the high-rise building and the edge of the Ostankino television tower.
Near the Macedonian office live peacocks, which sometimes come to talk and smoke a couple of cigarettes. Peacocks are very revered in Macedonia and they can often be found in parks or near Orthodox churches. Peacocks create a positive much more than colleagues from the neighboring office in Moscow, who also sometimes come to smoke.
With peacocks, we spend time with coffee and a cigarette in such a smoking room (in Moscow, the building owner forbade smoking on the premises of the office center and the smoking room is now on the porch, almost on the road)
I began to fully understand the advantages of my position at the end of October last year, when the first snow fell in Moscow and the Sun shone in Skopje. It was on that day that the good colleagues sent a photo of our office on Star Boulevard, and I took pictures of my office in retaliation and sent them. That's what happened.
Behind the narrative, while I deliberately leave the financial and economic aspects of distant work in Macedonia, I will describe it in the next post, which I hope will appear soon after our marketer Eugenia reads this post and gives her opinion. However, she will do it solely for informational purposes, since the story about Macedonia is the cry of my soul, and not the marketing need of the project (well, or almost no need)
In order to add positive post another photo of the Oskop sunset, in my opinion this is also the end of October
The financial and economic continuation (with food prices, communal tariffs, the cost of renting an office and housing, and generally the cost of living in Macedonia) follows.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/293098/
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