HighQ Solutions is a leading provider of fully-managed, cloud-based solutions. It was founded in 2001, and provides innovative collaboration and publishing products to some of the world's leading law firms, investment banks and corporations.

"We provide online deal room and social collaboration tools, software as a service," explains Saviz Izadpanah, IT Director at HighQ Solutions. "But not in the 100% traditional sense where you have just a single application with millions of people logging in. We have one application but multiple instances of the same application, hosted at Firstserv. Each application is specific to one client, and it can be customised to closely match the client's corporate identity. More importantly it increases client security, because each instance is completely separate. Separate database, separate file system, separate application."

With software to sell to clients, the first choice HighQ had to make was how best to provide the support and customisation that their clients needed. Rather than follow a client-install model, they opted for software as a service.

"We knew we wanted to be web-based," explains Saviz, "we didn't want to have a CD we send to our clients to install, because when there is a support call we have to go out, troubleshoot the problem - which depends on what infrastructure they have got in place - and then fix it there. When you have a hosted service it is under your control, it's you managing it."

The decision to offer their software as an online service is beneficial to the clients as well. "[Our software] provides a means of making content available outside of the firewall to their clients, and makes sharing data internally a lot easier. People can work from home, on their iPad; wherever they are they can securely access the data."

This easy access to data is a crucial component of the Banking Legal Technology (BLT) Portal. "The BLT Portal is one of many products we host in Firstserv. Based on the requirements set out by the top UK Law firms we have created a portal which they publish their content to, and then their banking clients can log in, search, browse and download content."

For any company offering web based solutions, there are a number of things that must be considered, including performance, reliability and security, which are all vital both for the company itself and for their end users. With such high profile clients it was crucial that HighQ's solutions be reliable, and so they chose to use the expertise and infrastructure of a hosting partner to deliver their online services.

"We always try to get as much control on the infrastructure as we can" maintains Saviz, and for HighQ it was very important that they be able to manage as much as possible themselves, while still having the benefits of a hosting partner. A colocation solution provides them with the control they want, along with the connectivity and support required.

"Firstserv has been the most stable infrastructure we've tried. Rack, power and internet connectivity; as long as that is stable we are happy."

Firstserv provide HighQ with a colocation service in their Docklands datacentres, which allows HighQ's servers to use Firstserv's high performance network infrastructure. With top of the line Rittal Racks, 100% power guarantees and internet connectivity provided across diverse links, the connection is resilient and scalable.

HighQ have found other benefits of their hosting partner in addition to the stability of the Firstserv infrastructure. "We have access to the right people whenever we need to," Saviz says, "Contacting some companies has been painful, it's so slow, but with Firstserv I can email auto-support and have a conversation with someone. The 24x7 support line has been good for us too, we get an answer even outside of hours and can get someone to go and look at the servers. Most other providers are not as responsive."

"One place where Firstserv are significantly better than others is on the 95th percentile [billing for bandwidth use]. Certain other places cap bandwidth at four times the contracted amount, so if we buy five megabits we get 20 max burstable." [Firstserv's bandwidth is burstable up to 100meg, and is billed on the 95th percentile model, whereby usage can exceed a specified threshold for brief periods of time without being charged.] "When transferring data with a 20 meg cap it is slower, and you are at 20 for a longer period of time, and it is a lot easier to hit the 95%. Firstserv doesn't do that, and that is a massive benefit."

Firstserv have been working with HighQ Solutions since 2002, and hope to continue to do so. "The price is competitive," concludes Saviz, "and we are happy with the service."