Image, from left: Kai Waterfield, John Hunt, Richard Williamson, Manish Hiran, Matt Soldo (Google), Olivier Yiptong (Google), Jonathan Liversidge, Samuel Melrose.

A1 Comms staff recently welcomed top Google Cloud employees, Matt Soldo and Olivier Yiptong, to their head office to share technical learnings around Google’s hosting platform. Soldo and Yiptong, Product Manager and Software Engineer at Google, made the special visit to A1 Comms in Derbyshire, UK, all the way from their San Francisco base in California, USA. The visit took place following recent development work by Sam Melrose, A1 Comms Systems Engineer, that identified several enhancements and solutions to novel system issues that quickly caught the attention of the development team at Google Cloud. The Googlers working with Melrose were taken by his technical knowledge and innovative use of the Cloud platform and were enthusiastic to collaborate more closely with A1 Comms. Jonathan Liversidge, IT Director at A1 Comms, explained, “Google reached out to Sam because they were so impressed with some of the deeper technical challenges he was helping solve. Google were extremely keen to understand how we as a business were using its platform and exactly what we thought of its products and services, asking to visit us in person at our head office.” The advanced Google Cloud Platform underpins how A1 Comms operates as a business, facilitating the capacity, scalability and stability required to sustain the millions of web traffic views its online consumer brands like Buymobiles.net and Affordable Mobiles receive every year, as well as the EPOS systems supplied to franchisees and key partners of A1 Comms. Liversidge said, “We really put Google Cloud to the test with record traffic levels over the Black Friday 2018 weekend; levels that many of our competitors seemed to struggle to cope with. Our systems didn’t break a sweat.” Soldo and Yiptong made the circa 5000-mile trip to A1 Comms eager to learn more about the telecommunication company’s experiences with Google Cloud, and how Google could improve its platform. Commenting on his visit, Soldo said, “We enjoyed meeting the team and found the day incredibly valuable. A1 Comms was able to provide us with a full view of its business and how Google Cloud and App Engine fits into it.” Yiptong added “Hearing first-hand about the impact of our product on A1 Comms’ team was very interesting. This is very valuable in shaping our products, and we’ll be sure to incorporate our learnings in our products in the future.” A1 Comms extends its gratitude to Soldo, Yiptong and the entire Google Cloud team for the opportunity to work more closely and explore development opportunities for all parties.  

Press Contact

Jamie Dalton
A1 Comms
[email protected]