We had the chance to sit down with Coe Lottis and Eli Anderson from The Program to discuss how they used Panda for their newest project. Coe is a Partner and Director of brand Strategy. He crafts concepts for their brand partners, then brings those concepts to market. Eli is a Senior Application Engineer.
About The Program
The Program is a digital agency located in Portland, Oregon with a growing client base in Los Angeles. The agency has a number of big brand clients, such as Nike, Twitter, Obey Clothing and more. Most of their clients lean on them for technology, and new and innovative ways of interacting with consumers across digital touchpoints.
The Program’s newly launched project allows users to upload their own content. This year-long project uses Panda. “It has been a fun one for us,” Coe says. Eli adds: “The app is live in production. Everything is working great.”
Ease Of Use Made Panda The Obvious Choice
For this project, The Program was looking for a cloud video encoding solution. They relied on their application engineers to pitch solutions they thought would be a good fit for the project’s needs and requirements.
The Program’s tech lead, Eli worked with Panda previously, so suggested it for this project. “This was the third large project integration that I used Panda for. I evaluated it along with a couple other solutions. One of the main reasons I chose it for this project is the ease of integration. I mainly develop on Ruby, and did all the integration from scratch. This project uses Ruby on Rails and Panda has great integration there.”
“What it came down to was ease-of-use more than anything,” adds Coe Lottis. “As we looked at what some of the options were, it became apparent that Panda was the right fit. Having a tech lead that was familiar and comfortable working with Panda made it our obvious choice.”
User Integrations Makes Panda A Turnkey Product That The Program Recommends
Panda can easily be integrated using a web interface, javascript API or other integration. The Program sees this as one of its key benefits. Eli used Panda’s Ruby Gem to integrate. He goes on to say, “I also really like the debug console that Panda has for uploads, and being able to send messages back to the application. It’s super handy. The tool is set up well, and is easy to use.”
We asked Coe if he would recommend Panda for similar solutions. “I would suggest Panda for its user integration. When we have a large project that takes upwards of a year, we look for solutions that don’t require heavy lifting from an integration perspective. Panda has a turnkey solution that provides all the features we needed for the requirements of this project. We were able to roll it out with minimal effort, based on the service that Panda offers.”
Panda Doesn’t Slow The Train
Sometimes, integrating third-party tools can slow down a project path. Not so with Panda, Coe states: “When you look at having to integrate third-party systems, it can bog things down and really slow the train. It’s key for us to work with a third-party vendor, like Panda, where we can get the support and information that we need in a timely manner. You can hit hurdles when you work through certain levels of integration that sometimes aren’t necessary. It may boil down to a third-party service not remaining focussed on what their piece is. Panda focusses on what it does and does it really well. It’s allowed us to plug in and keep moving along.”
Panda’s Pricing Sweetens The Deal
In addition to ease-of-use and ease-of-integration, Coe Lottis goes further to say: “The costs are great. Panda’s pricing model allowed us to hang on to our budget.”