2020 – A roller coaster ride

The year 2020 has definitely been something different. Many would already like to skip the whole year. Unfortunately it will be mainly remembered negatively due to the Coronavirus outbreak and Covid-19 pandemia. Besides the spreading virus and lockdown, we in Zagreb also experienced the strongest earthquake in 140 years on March 22nd. A wakeup call I will never forget and don’t want to experience ever again. 

There will be a lot of aftermath related to actions taken by governments around the world trying to slow down the outbreak. Those actions have had an impact one everyone’s lives and as the world economy is most likely going towards a downfall, the impact will be even bigger. We just don’t know yet how long and deep that fall will be. On the positive side we know that the world will be digitalized even faster than before, and people are allowed to work more remotely and freely at their convenience. 

Also our Software Sauna team got hit by the negative impact of the pandemia. Our year started pretty well and we were aiming to hire more people during Q1 and things looked very positive. Unfortunately, when the first Covid-19 cases started to be found in the Nordics and later in the US, many of our possible new clients hit the brakes. That is a totally understandable reaction in front of something unknown. We were definitely not alone in this situation.

Countless businesses, small and bigger ones, globally got struck by Corona. There are also several IT companies sharing the pain of uncertainty and lost business opportunities. Luckily during the difficult times, you realize that the hard work done before starts to pay off at some point. Our sales team has been working hard long before and after the outbreak of Corona. All those leads, outbound calls, talks with possible clients, and follow-ups are the key to finding new projects.

Now after a month of “beach time”, our developers who were left out without a project in March-April are back in business. We have started cooperation with a couple of new clients from Finland, including a very interesting and promising music app startup which allowed us to finally expand our expertise into native mobile development. Meaning 2 new senior mobile developers are joining the heat of Sauna in a couple of weeks. And we are not planning to stop here!

Besides new exciting projects, we have recently received two new public references from our previous projects. Both are Finnish startup companies from HealthTech and VR/AR hardware domains. We have been very happy to work with both of these great companies, which have trusted us on their journey. Software Sauna team proudly presents:

Case Kipuwex

Software Sauna built a web application to be an integral part of the Kipuwex pain assessment product. With this web application, nurses can monitor the patients’ health information and assess patient pain more reliably. A team of Sauna developers built the application from scratch, keeping a constant open dialogue with Kipuwex, in order to always improve the product in a desired direction. The application was mainly developed using modern JavaScript frameworks, most notably React and CSS

Marko Höynälä, CEO, Kipuwex: “The co-operation with Software Sauna went very well. The company’s project team worked professionally right from the first meeting. In technology projects, schedules are usually underestimated but with Software Sauna we stayed on schedule and communication worked well. Really professional and trustworthy team. A warm recommendation.

Case Varjo Technologies

Software Sauna helped Varjo develop their user-facing Windows application for managing the hardware and software stack of Varjo headsets. This was done using Electron, React and Redux. With the application, users are able to manage settings of the Varjo headsets.

Erkko Anttila, Vice President, Varjo: “It has been easy to work with Software Sauna. They have helped us to scale up our frontend development knowledge and their skillset has been a very good fit for our needs.”