If you’ve ever conquered a “Hors Catégorie” hill on your bike, you know the satisfaction of tracking every detail—like the punishing 8% grade, the miles of effort, and setting a personal best to share with friends. That’s the experience Strava provides to millions worldwide. For James Kang, IT Manager at Strava, ensuring that every piece of infrastructure operates seamlessly is essential to delivering that delightful experience.
That said, IT and internet infrastructure is highly complex. And for James, it was taking so much of his attention away from other aspects of his role, he went looking for a solution. And he found it with Meter.
Strava is an app that lets over 125 million users track their fitness activities, such as running, hiking, or biking up steep hills. It also contains a social aspect where users can chat, compare stats, and ask for trail and route recommendations. With offices in the US, UK, and Europe, James has his hands full monitoring and supporting such dispersed locations.
The challenge: small IT team, big responsibilities
When you have a small but mighty team, IT managers know they have to be prudent with where they spend their time and energy. Tracking outages, down ports, or wonky access points takes a lot of both, especially when scattered across multiple locations on multiple continents. “If a port goes down, you have to look into it,” James tells us, continuing, “With a smaller team, we share know-how and nobody really specializes. So when it comes to building out a new office, we’re already strapped for bandwidth.”
“Knowing that we’d have a dedicated team of Meter’s networking experts handling setup, installation, and ongoing 24/7 monitoring—was all leadership needed to hear.” James Kang IT Manager, Strava
“I was selling the idea of using Meter to leadership, based on the fact that I don’t have a dedicated network administrator. We had multiple office setups going on simultaneously, meaning multiple hardware vendors, installation contractors, and sites that all needed oversight.” James relates. “So when I brought Meter to them, letting them know that Meter takes all of that off my plate, as well as costing nothing up front, wrapping everything into a single monthly bill based on square footage, they were on board fast.”
The solution: seamless, scalable internet infrastructure
James was no stranger to Meter. “I used Meter in my last role, and we had a head of IT who was an early proponent of your model, so it was already in place,” he tells us. “My experience there was awesome.”
Now, with Strava, James is contending with the issue of trying to split his already stretched bandwidth between his regular duties and staring down new office builds. “At the end of the day, Meter is taking care of all the logistics,” he tells us. “And knowing Meter’s teams are handling the build-out, I can get on with managing my other locations, knowing that you’ll contact me if I’m needed, which I rarely am.”
The peace of mind this brings James can’t be overstated. “Soon after installation, we saw some anomalies in our DNS records, some devices were unable to connect. Rather than shift from what I was working on, I submitted a ticket with ‘high’ priority and got back to work knowing it would be taken care of.”
The result: flexibility and peace of mind
Strava is a fast-moving company that needs to stay flexible to continue growing and innovating. For James, that means he has to consider things like contract lengths as well as project timelines and overhead on top of continuing to maintain and manage everyone’s IT needs across locations.
“I think the unique thing about this situation was that we’d been looking to stay put for a year then leadership suddenly said, ‘we’re moving,’” James tells us. “Meter gave us the flexibility to be able to do that without costing an arm and a leg or leading to downtime while we hunted for new providers and contractors, then got the whole project up and running.”
James continued, “Knowing that we can build out our internet infrastructure in Denver and San Francisco and not have to deal with the overhead and hassle of setting up and managing everything myself gives me the peace of mind I need to stay focused on other business areas.”
Meter: the future-proofing your business needs
Looking forward, James can see even more benefits for Strava as they continue to expand their presence with new offices. “When we can have Meter come into a new space and have us up and running in a matter of weeks, not months, of course we’re going to.”
“I would recommend Meter for the planning and logistics alone, but of course, you offer so much more.” James Kang IT Manager, Strava
When asked what advice he has for others who may be on the fence about using Meter, James had this to say, “For a reasonable monthly charge, based on the square footage of your office, you get a team of network professionals available to help 24/7, dedicated to managing your internet infrastructure. That’s Meter.”