Christopher Monticolombi, director and co-founder, WeShape
"One of our biggest achievements is the continued growth of WeShape, which has been completely organic and without external funding"
2021 was a challenging year for the IT industry, but with high demand for products and IT services, the DevOps sector has many achievements to celebrate at the DevOps Excellence Awards this month.
After two years of hosting these awards virtually, we are delighted to welcome all of the finalists to a live awards ceremony on Wednesday 23rd March in London.
One of those finalists is WeShape, who is in the running for Best DevOps Consulting Firm.
Christopher Monticolombi is the director and co-founder of WeShape, and organiser of the London Tech Leaders Community. He has a wealth of experience in the advice, design and deployment of DevOps, digital, data and cloud solutions, and has built one of the largest peer-to-peer networks in the technology industry. Outside of WeShape, Monticolombi enjoys MMA and boxing, and can often be found talking about all things crypto, e-sports and investments.
We caught up with him to find out what makes his company different from other technology firms.
Computing: Please provide some background on your company for our readers
Christopher Monticolombi: WeShape is a DevOps, software engineering, data and cloud-native consultancy founded in 2019 by Jack Moore and myself. We set out with a mission to provide expertise on demand, at scale, to solve the hardest technical and organisational challenges to deliver continuous and lasting value.
We focus on providing advisory, technical implementation and coaching services, and over the last three years have scaled from a team of two in 2019 to 41 in 2021, working on some of the most exciting projects within the UK and EMEA regions. WeShape are also proud organisers of some of the leading technology communities within the UK, including London DevOps and London Tech Leaders.
CTG: What makes you different from other technology companies?
CM: WeShape's operating model is unique - our team is made up of technical consultants and ex-industry technology recruiters, which enables us to identify customer pain-points, build bespoke solutions and mobilise teams rapidly and at scale. We've achieved this by building a gig-economy of the best industry experts within the DevOps, software engineering, data and cloud markets.
Our business is vendor neutral and technology-agnostic, with experience across all major cloud platforms. That enables us to deploy solutions that work in the best interests of our customers.
We are often engaged due to our market domain expertise and the fact that we focus on outcomes, whilst ensuring our solutions are IR35 compliant.
CTG: What one company achievement in the last 12 months are you most proud of?
CM: One of our biggest achievements is the continued growth of WeShape, which has been completely organic and without external funding. We had 333 per cent growth across the core team, 400 per cent growth across our project consultancy team and over 100 per cent client growth (delivering solutions across the UK and the EMEA region). But we didn't just focus on profit, we have an incredible culture. As a collective we want to have a positive impact as a business, so in 2021 we also achieved signatory of the Tech Talent Charter, offset our carbon emissions and are currently B-Corp pending.
CTG: What are you working on this year?
CM: We have some huge growth plans for 2022 and are looking to expand our technical teams and internal capabilities across the UK, Europe and USA!
In addition, we will be launching the WeShape Tech Academy, which aims to support young people from underrepresented and underprivileged backgrounds, and give them an opportunity to work in technology alongside the best talent in the industry.
We are also launching a product investment arm focusing on SaaS-based solutions, and a tech hub for associates to work from our London offices where partners can collaborate with our internal and project teams. It's going to be a very busy and exciting year for all of us here at WeShape!
CTG: Why are events like the DevOps Excellence Awards important to the IT industry?
CM: The DevOps Excellence Awards are a great opportunity to highlight some of the incredible work companies, individuals and organisations deliver within the market. More often than not, a lot of the work and projects being delivered go unnoticed, or we are too busy to have time to reflect on our achievements, and it's important we celebrate success, the near misses and learning opportunities!
It's also important to network and meet like-minded individuals and organisations, and celebrate those who have contributed to the DevOps community each year!
For smaller organisations, it's a great accomplishment to be shortlisted for the DevOps Excellence Awards and share this with your team, customers and partners who have helped you along the way - an opportunity to celebrate together!
The DevOps Excellence Awards will take place on the 23rd March 2022 at The Montcalm, Marble Arch. Finalists can click here to book a table.
