CASE STUDY
At a Glance
Company | HighQ
Founded | 2001
Headquarters | London, United Kingdom
Industry | Enterprise software-as-a-service
CDN Services | Dynamic Web Acceleration
Key Results
+
Accelerated dynamic website content and secure document transfer times globally by up to 2,000%+
Solidified base of global customers+
Saved approximately 70% in infrastructure costs+
Improved service without adding data centres+
Enhancing sales to more international customersHighQ Accelerates Dynamic Cloud Application
Performance by
up to 2,000%
, Improving
2
-HighQ is a leading provider of secure document exchange and social collaboration software. Its flagship
enterprise collaboration platform, HighQ Collaborate, uniquely combines secure, enterprise-grade document management with innovative corporate social tools. As a result some of the world’s leading law
firms, investment banks and corporations leverage HighQ Collaborate, and other product offerings, to effectively manage team collaboration and knowledge sharing across their global networks of colleagues,
partners and clients, both inside and outside of the organisation.
The Challenge
Many HighQ customers utilise the cloud-based platform to save time and effort over hosting their own solutions in-house. They benefit from the “instant-on” nature of the cloud application as well as its
availability to employees, clients and partners in one unified system.
Internet performance limits collaboration
Several clients, including those of a major international law firm, began to roll out HighQ’s collaboration platform to their overseas offices. It quickly became apparent that users outside of Europe were experiencing high latency when accessing the application. The firm’s employees and clients were
frequently collaborating between the US, UK and Australia and were experiencing a slowdown in web
page loading and document transfer speeds, especially during peak business hours.
HighQ realised that such performance would impede collaboration between its client’s global network of offices and knew it had to respond quickly. After all, delivering a responsive service has been a
cornerstone of HighQ’s growth and success. According to Saviz Izadpanah, HighQ’s Director of IT, “We have experienced 100% year-on-year growth over the past three years, partly because our clients see us as a partner that responds to their concerns without delay. To maintain our hard-fought reputation, we sought to address the issue of global Internet performance as quickly as possible. We didn’t want it to limit our ability to serve our international users.”
“Global organisations are becoming
increasingly dependent on cloud-based
solutions and, by using CDNetworks,
we’re now able to give them the
high performance they expect from
anywhere in the world”
SAVIZ IZADPANAH
Global Data Centres Drain Resources
To achieve optimal performance for users in the US and Australia, HighQ considered hosting in multiple local data centres. However, security-conscious customers are drawn to HighQ because of its enterprise-grade hosting in specialised data centres. Once HighQ investigated the time and resource
required to establish similar data centre infrastructure overseas, it quickly decided that such a strategy
was not realistic. Explains Izadpanah, “To set up something like that would have drained our resources in terms of man-hours, data center setup costs and technology. There’s quite a long learning curve associated with managing the delivery of dynamic site content and applications across multiple data centres and networks.”
Key Objectives
As it evaluated methods for accelerating its own Internet performance, HighQ focused on three key
requirements. Firstly, it needed strong cloud application performance worldwide, not just in Europe, but also in the US and Australia. Its customers had also started to expand access to users based in the Middle East, India and China. This meant HighQ wanted to be ready to address Internet latency issues in those regions as well. Secondly, for security purposes, HighQ needed a solution that would improve performance without placing sensitive intellectual property into caches. The company’s clients would
object to document caching based on the strict security measures they take to protect their intellectual
property and sensitive information. Thirdly, HighQ wanted to maintain the highly dynamic and interactive nature of the application. As such, it wanted a solution that could also accelerate the dynamic elements of its application’s web pages, such as JavaScript, CSS, images, and dynamic HTML.
The Solution:
Dynamic Web Acceleration
After researching potential solutions, HighQ quickly recognised that a content delivery network, or
CDN, would suit its performance and security needs best. Not only can a CDN overcome global Internet performance problems, two best-of-breed CDNs provided services to accelerate dynamically changing
content. One of the providers, CDNetworks, ensured HighQ that it could accelerate both the application
and its dynamic environment without relying on local caches to store documents. This would enable
HighQ to streamline the service upgrade and respond to its clients’ requirements as quickly as possible.
“Global enterprises are becoming
increasingly dependent on cloud-based
solutions and, by using CDNetworks,
we’re now able to give them the
high performance they expect from
anywhere in the world.”
4
-Optimising Performance and Increasing
End-User Satisfaction
HighQ decided to evaluate CDNetworks’ Dynamic Web Acceleration service for a 30-day period. This allowed HighQ to experiment with different acceleration techniques without locking itself into a long-term
contract. Explains Izadpanah, “The trial helped us identify those portions of our web infrastructure that would
benefit most from acceleration. We realised substantial performance gains in both document downloads and
the dynamic elements of our site that immerse users in HighQ’s unique social environment.”
Accelerating HighQ’s product offerings with Dynamic Web Acceleration resulted in drastically better
end-user experiences in both Australia and the US. In fact, download speeds in these locations increased by 2,000% and 1,000%, respectively. Between Australia and the UK, document downloads and page loading speeds accelerated from 50Kbps to 1000Kbps per second. “Application acceleration completely
takes the brakes off SaaS applications,” says Izadpanah. “Global organisations are becoming increasingly dependent on cloud-based solutions and, by using CDNetworks, we’re now able give them the high performance they expect from anywhere in the world.”
Better Internet Performance Enables
International Growth
After extensive usage of Dynamic Web Acceleration, HighQ’s applications now perform more efficiently and at greater speed globally for all of its end users. This gives the HighQ team confidence to on-board new customers anywhere in the world. It has led the company to launch expansion efforts in two areas: sales of HighQ Collaborate, and other products, to a broader market of global companies and sales of
a new Global web acceleration service to existing customers. “Customers see the value of strong Internet
performance because effective collaboration helps them succeed. We maximise their success with a new differentiated service, effectively transforming our CDN services from a cost item to a potential revenue stream,”
concludes Izadpanah.
About
HighQ
HighQ is a leading provider of secure document exchange and enterprise collaboration software. It provides innovative collaboration and publishing products to some of the world’s leading law
firms, investment banks and corporations. It uniquely combines secure, enterprise-grade document
management with the best corporate social tools. Now you can securely exchange critical business information and collaborate with colleagues, customers and partners globally, in one place.
Our
Global Offices
US 441 W. Trimble Road, San Jose, CA 95131 +1 408 228 3700
EMEA Juxon House 100 St Paul’s Churchyard, London, EC4M 8BU +44 203 514 7501
Korea Handong Bldg. 2F, 828-7, Yeoksam-Dong, Gangnam-Gu, 135935 Seoul +82 2 3441 0400
About
CDNetworks
CDNetworks is a global content delivery network (CDN) with fully integrated Cloud Security DDoS protection and web application firewall. Our mission is to transform the Internet into a secure, reliable, scalable, and high-performing Application Delivery Network. CDNetworks accelerates more than 40,000 websites and cloud services over a network of 160 global PoPs in established and emerging markets
including China and Russia. We have been serving enterprise customers for 15 years across industries
such as gaming, finance, ecommerce, high tech, manufacturing, and media. CDNetworks offices are located in the U.S., UK, South Korea, China, Japan, and Singapore. For more information, please visit:
