CASE STUDY HighQ Accelerates Dynamic Cloud Application Performance by up to 2,000%, Improving Customers Global Collaboration At a Glance Company HighQ Founded 2001 Headquarters London, United Kingdom Industry Enterprise software-as-aservice 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 customers - 1 -
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 IT Director, HighQ - 2 -
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. - 3 -
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. www.highqsolutions.com - 4 -
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: http://www.cdnetworks.com US 441 W. Trimble Road, San Jose, CA 95131 +1 408 228 3700 Our Global Offices 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 Japan Nittochi Nishi-shinjuku Building, 8th Floor, 6-10-1Nishishinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 160-0023 +81 3 5909 3369 China F1-16 Tower B, Rui Chuang International Center, No 8, Wangjing East Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China, 100102 +86 10 8441 7749 Singapore 51 Cuppage Road, #06-07, Singapore 229469 +65 6908 1198 CDNetworks All rights reserved Features and specifications subject to change without notice. info@cdnetworks.com www.cdnetworks.com