Tier 3

HighJump Software Races to the Top of the Cloud

The race to develop cloud-based supply chain solutions is on, and HighJump Software is leading the pack in the Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) space. A developer of software applications that seamlessly move, track and store materials in a warehouse, HighJump turned to Tier 3’s high-performance enterprise cloud platform to get its own customers into the cloud quickly and efficiently.

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  • Challenge

    Find a way to position HighJump as a leading provider of cloud-based WMS without having to develop, host and manage a cloud platform internally. Key criteria for the new platform included flexibility, speed and the ability to scale up quickly to meet end user demands.

  • Solution

    After exploring its options, the company selected Tier 3 Enterprise Cloud Platform for its robust, enterprise-grade platform, short deployment time, flexibility, agility and affordability. The fully-managed software solution freed up both HighJump and its customers from having to deploy or manage software in their own data centers, and can be mobilized quickly to meet customer demand.

  • Impact

    Tier 3’s flexible platform allows HighJump to quickly take its existing WMS software and bring it to the cloud to serve customers in ways that didn’t make business or technical sense for the company to try to achieve on its own. The company has positioned itself as an important player in subscription-based WMS solutions that require no on-site installation, servers or disaster recovery tools.

Moving a Traditional Warehouse Management Offering into the Cloud

As a leading provider of supply chain execution software, HighJump historically focused on installing single instances of its WMS software at customer locations around the globe. With Gartner reporting that 80 percent of application software will be deployed through the cloud in some fashion by 2013, HighJump wanted to position itself to deliver a cloud-based WMS.

Channel IQ
Chad Collins

To support HighJump’s new offering, the cloud platform would have to be extremely flexible, and allow the company to modify and custom- ize its WMS for individual customers. Developing that infrastructure internally would be time-consuming and costly, and maintaining it would mean HighJump would have to both host and manage the platform, neither of which it wanted to do.

“From a core competency standpoint,” says Chad Collins, vice president of marketing and strategy, “we decided not to burden our own teams with managing the entire infrastructure associated with a cloud WMS. Instead, we went looking for a partner to help us get there.”

New Markets, More Agility

HighJump rolled out its new customer offering during the second quarter of 2010, with Tier 3 providing the enterprise grade cloud platform including virtualized instances of server hardware, operating systems and databases needed to run the cloud-based softwaresolution. “We simply install our WMS on top of the Tier 3 enterprise cloud platform, configure it for a specific customer, and sell the package as a total solution to our customers via subscription,” says Collins.
 
Tier 3’s flexible platform allowed HighJump to quickly take its existing WMS software and bring it to the cloud to serve customers in ways that didn’t make business or technical sense for the company to try to achieve on its own. Within a few hours, customers can be brought onto the HighJump cloud WMS platform, which is supported by enterprise-grade security, built-in disaster recovery and redundancy for mission critical operations.
 
With its new cloud-based offering, HighJump is also delivering an enhanced customer experience and removing the burden of operational support from its customers’ hands. In turn, HighJump too benefits from reduced support requirements. Without having to leverage is own IT resources, HighJump counts on Tier 3’s expert services and support team for database management and performance tuning, monitoring, security testing and proactive patching and updating, “... systematically getting in front of problems before they even affect our customers,” according to Amy Stelling-Kahler, vice president of worldwide support.
 
"The speed at which we’re able to add new customers in the cloud – and deliver those implementations – is pretty amazing. To top it off, Tier 3’s solution is also meeting all of our internal financial objectives."Chad Collins, Vice President of Marketing and Strategy

Exceeding Expectations

With just a few clicks in the Tier 3’s management portal interface, HighJump can reconfigure servers, test new environments and customize its WMS to meet the needs of specific customers. “The speed at which we’re able to add new customers in the cloud – and deliver those implementations – is pretty amazing,” says Collins. “To top it off, Tier 3’s solution is also meeting all of our internal financial objectives.”
 
With an increasing number of customers requesting cloud software solutions, HighJump is positioning itself as an important player in subscription-based WMS solutions that require no on-site installation, servers or disaster recovery tools. “We’ve established a leadership position in a market,” says Collins, “where none of our competitors even offer a full-blown cloud-based WMS that can run a complex distribution center.”

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