Six Feet Up Helps Businesses Navigate Digital Transformation With Python App Development, AI, Big Data, and Cloud Hosting Solutions

TL; DR: Six Feet Up was founded over two decades ago as a web hosting company on a mission to help businesses expand their online presence. Over the years, the company has evolved with the industry and emerging technologies, and now offers a full suite of services to help organizations implement digital transformation strategies. Six Feet Up empowers its clients to streamline and modernize their approach to Python application development, AI and machine learning, Big Data, and public cloud hosting and management. And the company continues to use its resources to reimagine a better world by following the Six Feet Up mantra — “Make Anything Possible.”

Digital transformation and cloud adoption have become catchphrases in industry, academia, and government. And it’s easy to see why the terms are so popular. In today’s business environment, organizations must stay agile, reach customers where they are, be able to scale, and connect distributed workforces while simultaneously promoting sound development, collaboration, and business strategies.

C-suite executives have been grappling with these challenges for quite some time, and balancing CAPEX and OPEX is tricky. But digital transformation and accelerating cloud adoption can have a big ROI.

As a result, 90% of organizations have embraced or plan to adopt a digital business strategy, according to one survey. And that same study showed that the reasons and benefits of digital transformation are multifaceted. Improving operational efficiency ranks high on the list, followed by meeting evolving customer needs, improving product quality and development, and saving money on capital expenditures, among others.

Six Feet Up, a certified Women Business Enterprise (WBE) software company, focuses on helping organizations leverage and adopt new technologies, and has a forward-thinking reputation. The company serves enterprises across industries and has an impressive résumé. Its achievements include optimizing ETL pipelines for healthcare systems, automating processes for a number of large organizations, helping enhance public cloud management strategies for finance giants, and collaborating with NASA on a Pluto learning initiative.

These are all impressive accomplishments. But when you zero in on Six Feet Up’s mission, it’s all about helping people and organizations thrive.

“Six Feet Up is focused on accelerating our clients’ digital transformation initiatives, which results in cost savings, streamlined workflows, and a competitive advantage,” said Gabrielle Hendryx-Parker, CEO.

In 1999, Six Feet Up was launched as a web hosting company focused on helping small businesses bolster their online presence. The internet was just beginning to proliferate at the time, and many business owners weren’t familiar with web technologies and how they worked.

“We set out to change the way people perceived the web with both a fun and friendly name and simple service offerings that small businesses needed,” Gabrielle said.

Gabrielle told us that the first decade of the 21st century saw a frantic race to build datacenters. Companies like Rackspace with large infrastructure holdings thrived in this market. But then came the hyperscalers, and the cloud began to take over.

“Amazon and the cloud rapidly destroyed this industry and took its predictable, recurring revenues with it,” Gabrielle said. “Seemingly overnight, Six Feet Up lost nearly 50% of its revenue.”

Soon after, WordPress and other content management systems hit the market and changed the industry forever.

“While these changes required a major shift in our business model, it was the ideal time to reinvent ourselves,” Gabrielle said. “We ramped up our engineering skills and invested in frameworks and tools that were both more powerful and more technical. Today, our high-value technical consulting services help innovative leaders accelerate their digital transformation.”

Six Feet Up has come a long way since its days as a humble web host. But the company’s journey has given it the experience it needed to serve the types of customers it partners with today. Having undergone a certain digital transformation itself, Six Feet Up has an intimate understanding of its clients’ pain points.

The company’s list of services has expanded quite a bit over the years, and now includes everything from Python app development and AI and machine learning enablement to solutions for Big Data and cloud migration and deployment through AWS.

“Our can-do mindset keeps the team focused on making anything possible for our clients,” Gabrielle said. “Whether we’re learning new tools or collaborating with competitors to combine our expertise, we will explore every avenue to meet joint goals.”

Gabrielle relayed one of her favorite stories that she said encapsulates the spirit of Six Feet Up. The company was working on a complex project involving the documentation of human languages. It was a massive undertaking, she said.

“Our team built a comprehensive archive that was both searchable and easy to navigate,” she said. “The client was thrilled with the end product, and during their next visit to our headquarters, they gave us a toy pig with wings saying: ‘With Six Feet Up, pigs truly can fly.’”

Six Feet Up has a rich history that spans two decades. But the company is not satisfied to rest on its laurels. Gabrielle told us that the team has made a mission out of leading the charge in the cloud enablement and Python development space and strives toward continuous learning and growth.

“While our technological choices are very much driven by our clients’ needs, we also heavily rely on our connections in the global Python and cloud communities to keep a pulse on the newest trends,” she said. “A significant part of our business strategy relies on actively participating in technical events like DjangoCon and Re:Invent.”

Gabrielle said the team also identifies global subject matter experts through Six Feet Up’s annual Python Web Conference. The 2021 conference featured 55 talks and tutorials and attracted 300 attendees from 41 countries.

The company is also fully committed to giving back to the community and boasts a solid CSR strategy and its IMPACTFUL program. Gabrielle noted that Six Feet Up has set out to complete 10 IMPACTFUL projects by 2025.

“These are projects that are impressive, purposeful, transformative and unquestionably benefit humankind,” Gabrielle said.

Currently, Six Feet Up has worked on three such projects — ranging from space exploration to lightning strike predictions and forest fire management.

“At Six Feet Up, we strive to use modern technologies and best practices to build a better world,” Gabrielle said. “I am glad to report we are well on our way to achieving our goal.”