James Ray

Quality is the bedrock of our vision.

James Ray our CEO was the President and CEO of Size Technologies until Size Technologies was acquired by First Data in January of 2007. James ran First Data’s San Francisco office after the acquisition and developed several new profit lines of business for First Data. Previously he was the President and Chief Technology Officer at DoughNET.com. And before that he was CTO and COO for Publicis & Hal Riney, a global advertising agency. In 1993 he founded JTR Capital, a NASD member firm, and Teelin Systems, a software company.

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Ozzy Espaillat

Software Development is about building value through innovation. It is not enough to build high quality software, but weaved into its foundation must be the ability to evolve with time.

Ozzy is a seasoned specialist with over 20 years of experience building large volume transaction systems for the payments space. Before IdeasX, Ozzy helped Mocapay, a mobile payments app, to integrate with MICROS and ALOHA on the POS side and connect their back end to multiple processors as well as built their customer engagement platform. As CTO of Size Technologies, Ozzy built a multi tenant processing platform that would run both Loyalty and Stored Value transactions with a rules engine for maximum flexibility. The platform was used by First Data, Bank of America Merchant Services, Starbucks, Blackhawk, and many others. At a sustained traffic of over 700 TPS, rich demographic loyalty data and a built in rules engine, it was a clear choice for any large processor offering rich gift and loyalty programs to their consumers. As such, Size Technologies was purchased by First Data to enhance their offering. Ozzy’s insight from years of experience building platforms from the ground up lends itself to the comprehensive analysis and 360 solutions offered for each of his clients.

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Michael Lasevich

For Good software to be Great software, it must be designed to be reliably and consistently deployed and maintained.

Michael is a technical operations specialist with over 20 years of experience in systems engineering and deployment of large scale automated systems. Before IdeasX, Michael helped MyFitnessPal, a top mobile app, to create and run a TechOps/DevOps team that supported a platform used by over 70 million users worldwide. Michael lent his systems engineering and systems architecture expertise to companies like Amazon and First Data as well as building his own deployment management suite to help with automation of DevOps processes. As the Director of Technical Operations for Size Technologies, Michael designed and implemented the system that allowed Size software to be seamlessly deployed and supported on a large variety of operating systems and application platforms across many clients. Michael specializes in holistic approach to systems, focusing on automation that gives power to the developers while maintaining security, reliability, and productivity.

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Payment Network Integration

Our extensive domain expertise focuses scope of work and helps deliver flexible solutions. Narrowing complexity upstream reduces time of implementation and maintenance cost by half.

Our client had a tight window of opportunity in the EU market to launch a MasterCard product within one quarter. Their current platform was not certified and did not support MasterCard EU mandates.

IdeasX performed a gap analysis between the client’s current platform and the MasterCard network specification. After a careful analysis of the network specification, we worked with the client to define business rules and a feature set for the new payment offering. Then we implemented, tested and deployed the new product integration. IdeasX worked with MasterCard to identify the test cases and then executed those test cases to certify with MasterCard.

IdeasX defined the product scope, implemented and tested the integration, and certified with MasterCard.

Capabilities:

• Over 20 different integrations into the major payment networks and acquirers and payment gateways.
• Expertise integrating open / closed loop networks including but not limited to FirstData, SVS, AmEx, Visa, MC, and EMV.
• Leverages the network specification to create the best possible product for domestic and international markets.

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Payment Product Initiatives

Staying ahead of the competition is challenging. Striking a balance between platform flexibility and core stability can be tricky even for the best businesses. This is when 16+ years of teamwork pays dividends for our partners.

Our client’s existing platform did not comply with the financial regulations (e.g. fees and fraud rules) of the EU.

IdeasX updated the existing platform to handle new product configurations for fees, velocity limits and network restrictions. IdeasX built a general purpose fee framework to help our client launch payment products faster, in the EU and other markets. IdeasX created a rules based velocity engine for EU compliance and to mitigate fraud.

IdeasX helps our clients successfully launch payment products on a single platform in domestic and international markets.

Capabilities:

• Custom loyalty platforms.
• Tokenization platform for loyalty and payment products.
• Mobile apps that integrate into legacy payment products.
• Granular fees engine enabling processors to quickly launch new products.
• Flexible rules engines to drive marketing, loyalty, product restriction and fraud rules.

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Security and Compliance

Security compliance provides confidence in your product. Focus on growing your business knowing that your platform is up to date with the latest industry standards and practices.

Our client was not in compliance with PCI mandates.

IdeasX performed the gap analysis between the current business practices and PCI standards. IdeasX published the findings and worked with the PCI auditor to define and document policies, processes and procedures bringing the client into compliance. IdeasX worked with the different business units within the company to publish and socialize the solution.

IdeasX helps clients define and manage security and compliance best practices.

Capabilities:

• Work with clients to implement cloud based or hosted HSM solution and architected key management, creating scalable and fault tolerant HSM services.
• Help clients stay ahead of the curve for EMV chip processing mandates.
• Manage and implement technical updates for PCI compliance.

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Performance

When margins matter, efficiency ensures your platform scales over cost. We’ve helped clients increase TPS throughput by orders of magnitude and smash partners SLAs. All while maintaining control of overhead.

Our client integrated a newly acquired business entity causing an exponential increase in CSR traffic.

IdeasX performed a structured analysis of the existing platform and its services APIs. Looking at the historical IVR data, we made traffic projections. IdeasX created a performance testing framework to simulate the projected loads and optimized the platform to meet SLA’s without affecting batch and TPS numbers.

IdeasX took the client platform from an unstable 10 TPS to reliable 80 TPS on same equipment.

Capabilities:

• Writing stress testing tools to measure platform metrics and simulate future growth.
• Improve system utilization by half for a more reliable, more scalable and more accessible platform.
• Work with major cloud and hardware providers to performance test and tune payment platforms.

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Reconciliation and Settlement

Faster reporting is a competitive advantage and maintaining accuracy while gracefully supporting the spectrum of back office use cases. This results in greater customer satisfaction and stronger partnerships.

Our client was not meeting their Client Contractual SLAs for business reporting and daily reconciliation reports.

IdeasX redesigned and implemented the application to execute batch reports in a timely manner. We improved data accuracy by fixing migrated data records. IdeasX added batch framework monitoring to provide metrics empowering operations to manage and report on job execution and capacity planning.

IdeasX created a parameterized batch application to generate reports for multiple client’s business partners.

Capabilities:

• Re-architecting, implementing reporting solutions to generate accurate and timely reports to meet SLAs.
• Creating tools to ensure the reliability of reporting.
• IdeasX improves performance for existing platforms allowing for projected growth in transaction volume and number of batch processes.

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Reliable Architecture and Operation

Great software only realizes its potential with reliable operation in mind starting at the first line of code. From an emphasis on automation, to making sure that the architecture matches the client’s needs. We help simplify development and operations by making sure our software is reliable, resilient and minimizes human error.

Our client was losing transactions during software upgrades, needing large outage windows, impacting customers.

IdeasX redesigned and implemented a new deployment methodology leveraging cloud technologies for a parallel production deployment of new software with a simple switchover mechanism for go live. This allowed deployments with zero outages and no transaction loss. The system has a simple rollback path in case an issue is discovered with the released version. The new system allowed upgrades during any load with zero transactions lost and no impact to end-users.

IdeasX created a zero-outage reliable automated deployment system.

Capabilities:

• Analysis of platform architecture to achieve most reliable operation.
• Use latest technologies and methodologies to achieve maximum reliability for software deployment and operations.
• Configuration management that is the same for Dev, Staging and Production, allowing guaranteed results without operational complexity.

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• Date: July 2014
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• Category: Graphic Design

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Use this area to describe your project. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Est blanditiis dolorem culpa incidunt minus dignissimos deserunt repellat aperiam quasi sunt officia expedita beatae cupiditate, maiores repudiandae, nostrum, reiciendis facere nemo!

Want these icons in this portfolio item sample?You can download 60 of them for free, courtesy of RoundIcons.com, or you can purchase the 1500 icon set here.

• Date: July 2014
• Client: Round Icons
• Category: Graphic Design

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