Koya Medical is a vertically integrated medical device manufacturer producing a lightweight, portable compression treatment for those living with lymphedema, or chronic swelling. The device is battery-powered and non-pneumatic, freeing patients to go about their daily lives without being tied to a wall outlet.
With a dispersed office workforce and on-site employees at their production and distribution facilities, Koya’s Manager of IT Nicholas Montgomery had significant reconfiguring to do after the company decided to relocate company headquarters and manufacturing from Oakland, California, to Dallas, Texas. He turned to his trusted advisor, Josh Mitchell of Bridgepointe Technologies, for advice.
Meter: making infrastructure moves seamless by extending your IT team
As the head of IT for the fast-growing startup, Nicholas’ hardware support team consists of himself in California and one technician on the ground in Dallas. That meant when it came time to build out the internet infrastructure for the new facility, they needed help. Nicholas and his teammate were already operating at maximum capacity dealing with the day-to-day support tickets and enhancements. They could not take on a project of the magnitude of building a brand-new network by themselves. They would have to at the very least, outsource the procurement and installation of the equipment for the new network and either hire a new resource to help support it or outsource that as well.
“For a company of our size, it wouldn't make sense to hire a full-time resource to purely manage the network. They would have to be an all-arounder who did that, but also worked on other hardware/software tickets.” Nicholas Montgomery Manager of IT, Koya Medical
Koya Medical’s specific requirements made Josh immediately think of Meter, knowing its zero upfront cost model, managed installation, and proactive support would be the perfect fit.
“Meter is to networking what cloud calling was to legacy phone systems — before, separate vendors handled circuits and hardware. With Meter, we’re finally able to monetize both, creating a true win-win for agents and customers.” Josh Mitchell Partner, Arkitech Group (a Bridgepointe Technologies company)
Bridgepointe technologies recommends Meter for Koya Medical's network
The idea of zero upfront cost for full-stack enterprise-grade hardware, combined with the knowledge that Meter handles the entire installation process end-to-end, made the decision straightforward for Nicholas.
That said, he did look at multiple options. “You never just get one quote, right? So there was an MSP whose proposal I really liked, but when I ran the numbers, it just didn’t make sense. Between the steep upfront and licensing costs for hardware plus needing an additional onsite tech for maintenance, Meter became the obvious choice,” Nicholas said.
Meter supports you from network design to lifecycle management
Since Koya’s new headquarters was set to be in a new build, Nicholas and the onsite team kept in close contact with Koya’s construction team, who reported back on the network installation progress. And that feedback was all positive, Nicholas relates, “The folks there in Dallas reported that ‘these Meter folks know their stuff,’ and I never saw any different.”
When an unusually severe windstorm struck Dallas, Meter’s value was cemented for Nicholas. “Bottom line was that the first person to report on the power outage was Meter. Seeing that email in my inbox was truly impressive as we did not think that Meter would be involved in a power outage scenario at all. The support team saw that our network went down and got in touch to see what they could do to assist.” Nicholas says.
“When the first email in my inbox alerting me to the outage was from Meter, I hadn’t even heard from our office manager yet, that’s when I knew Meter had our back.” Nicholas Montgomery Manager of IT, Koya Medical
“We executed a workaround to get the network powered back up, as we weathered the storm and did not skip a beat. The whole experience showed me the benefits of having a team monitoring your internet infrastructure 24/7,” he continued.
Meter: Internet infrastructure that flexes to your needs
Since Koya is also vertically integrated, they had one custom request regarding how their network was set up—they needed separate networks for the manufacturing floor and the office. With specialist printers on the floor, having someone in the office accidentally print a 20-page report to the wrong printer can get expensive. “The install team handled the wiring, and the support team set up the subnets we needed,” Nicholas explained.
As to whether he recommends Meter for other organizations in the medical devices space? “For a scaling company like Koya, Meter’s model of vertically integrated internet infrastructure is absolutely the way to go.”