Building an application and its infrastructure under extreme deadlines

The client

Valkyr started operating in 2010, and today the number of its employees approaches 60. The company works in IT security and network system integration, complemented by the support and operation of integrated solutions. These include IT security solutions such as firewalls, content filters, data leak prevention systems, vulnerability scanners and WAFs.

Their network-building team started, unusually, with the support of digital networks, but today it also serves wired systems such as data centres. The company’s third pillar is data processing and log management. In 2024 they also launched their SOC service, which was a great success right from the start. Their clients belong to the enterprise category, from both public administration and the private sector.

The IT leader

Miklós Juhász is one of the owners of Valkyr, and he also works at the company as business development director. His main task is to keep the company’s growth on a sustainable and transparent path, while avoiding the trap of internal processes failing to keep up with the pace of the company’s growth. Before this, building the complete technical team was his responsibility. Project management also came under him, which is how he became involved in the reference project on which they worked with the Andrews team. He started his career at filter:max Kft. in 2003 as a junior engineer, from where, over the years, he arrived at the idea of founding Valkyr with his co-founder.

Building together on the IT front line

Valkyr and Andrews essentially work together on infrastructure-building projects, among them mostly on-premise engagements. Within these, Andrews mostly works on mapping out the application, backend and middleware layers: they are the ones who help “build the product”, while Valkyr “builds a fortress around the product to protect it”. Their services thus complement each other perfectly.

Andrews establishes similar cooperations with shared responsibility at other clients too, for example within the managed network security service or SOC as a Service.

On the edge of the impossible, yet on time

The joint work of Valkyr and Andrews began in the summer of 2024. Valkyr and one of its partners, ACPH, were already working on a project that was sensitive in many respects when a shortage of resources appeared. They also saw the need to bring in knowledge that would strengthen the team, and to bridge this, ACPH recommended the Andrews team based on its own experience. Because of the sensitivity of the project, their hands were tied as to which partners they could involve in the cooperation, but Andrews passed the screening.

“This was quite an extreme story.” According to Miklós, they themselves were brought into the project rather late, and Andrews joined months later still. There was enormous time pressure on them, but every provider handled it exceptionally well. “The mere fact that it was delivered on time is a huge thing.” Miklós could not disclose details because of the sensitivity of the project, but he did reveal that it was an application developed from scratch, whose environment also had to be built from scratch. Despite this, by mid-2025 it was running live in the support phase, with work having started in September 2024.

The application is also distributed geographically, high availability plays a key role, and every physical entry required separate organisation because of the sensitive working environment. Even so, Andrews was able to be a partner in everything and handled the tasks flexibly.

When engineering precision meets a human attitude

At Andrews, a “thoroughly professional, engineer-centred company”, Miklós experienced a much higher level of flexibility during the cooperation than expected. They too felt the weight of the project and were aware of its complexity in advance, yet they adapted very well to every change. Flexibility alone would not be enough, but fortunately at Andrews it is paired with outstanding expertise.

Miklós added that they also managed to build a very good human relationship with Andrews, which, as he says, is not necessarily a given in this market. They saw the workings of an absolutely reliable company during the joint work. Along the way they also experienced that whenever something came up, they solved it; they did not turn their backs on difficulties or challenges.