Chris Woodhams

Chief Executive Officer and Platform Architect @Zenbu Networks Limited

NZ

As a small business, we all wear multiple hats. At Zenbu, our small team of three owners run the business. My two fellow owners are both marketing and pricing gurus and focus on this (working only part-time.) I architect the technology solutions (contracting engineers to perform the software builds.) Our stack includes a router, running OpenWRT and our custom firmware, on the customer premises, The customer\'s router sessions are controlled by our AWS-hosted frontend. The AWS front end communicates with our OCS (Online Charging Service) which performs complex ratings. All data is then sent into our backend database containing subscriber data which is used for business analysis and analytics.(We have a complex architecture and this description simplifies complexity to English.)Used by Hospitality and Accommodation providers, Zenbu offers control and management of guest WIFI access and allows the operating Hotspot to allocate a site guest a volume of data while connected to the WIFI network. The solution enables the guest to purchase additional data.On returning from Europe, we negotiated to purchase this company from the original founders.We evolved Zenbu, migrated from data centre hardware onto the AWS EC2 Cloud, and grew the business further. Along the way, we integrated additional offerings by partnering with a larger New Zealand business, and they have since taken over Support, Back Office, and Management functions.