HighPoint Technology Group
Crafting Next-Generation Cloud Business Solutions

A decade ago, while serving as the COO for an IT Service Provider, Steve Guistwite, the president of HighPoint Technology Group set out to define a comprehensive support methodology. His aim was to bridge the cultural and philosophical differences between a third-party IT managed services company and an internal IT department. “My experience as an IT executive taught me how to develop a repeatable customer service culture,” says Guistwite. The challenge was to find a way to build the same culture but under a one-to-many relationship model. This philosophy did not fit well with his current company, and he decided it was time to move on. “We were going through a recession due to the subprime mortgage fallout, but my values and ethics told me that regardless of the economy, I simply had to leave my current company and continue my work on this initiative. It became something of an obsession and I wasn’t about to compromise my beliefs at the time even though it was perceived to be more difficult,” Guistwite adds. As he left, the honest and transparent customer service culture that he had built over the years paid off and he realized tremendous client support for his new venture.

Guistwite started working as an independent consultant and soon realized that he was ready to take his concept to the next level. “A healthcare billing client that I happened to be visiting was having a really bad day. As I entered the lobby of her building, she saw me and laughed, saying, ‘You are the highpoint of my day!’” says Guistwite. And that’s how HighPoint Technology Group was born. Today, HighPoint has reserved a spot for itself in consulting, managed services, cloud services, outsourcing, and data center services and is a leading provider of technology services for healthcare, energy, financial, manufacturing, and government enterprises.

"The Volaré Cloud Solution bridges the gap between public and private solution sets while ingraining cohesive support and active security measures"

HighPoint’s philosophy is they do not try to change a customer’s operations or IT environment just for the sake of making them easier to support moving forward, nor do they accept every customer opportunity. “It is important for us to bring on customers that are a fit for our culture. This allows us to have our consultants work closely with our customers and build a high degree of trust in a relatively short period of time,” says Guistwite. Further, HighPoint helps customers maintain flexibility by structuring services in an easy-to-consume manner without the fear of being locked into an excessively long-term agreement.

With over twenty years in the business, HighPoint has helped countless organizations across the United States make the best use of their business technology.

HighPoint’s staff consists solely of certified engineers, technical consultants, and support staff who have years of applicable business experience, thereby allowing them to proactively anticipate a customers’ specific requirements. This puts a tremendous amount of expertise under one roof and completely at their customer’s disposal.

HighPoint has all the needed expertise within the periphery of their organization, creating an efficient one-stop solution for businesses looking to reap the benefits of cloud services

Hyper-converged Cloud Made Easy

HighPoint has built a hyperconnected IaaS hybrid cloud environment called the Volaré Cloud Solution. Operating from multiple world-class tier IV data center locations, with redundant physical and virtual infrastructures, HighPoint removes the entire burden associated with system hardware and data center operations through its Volaré Cloud Solution. It is a fully managed cloud solution which provides a customizable array of both public and private cloud environments. “The Volaré Cloud Solution bridges the gap between public and private solution sets while etching in a cohesive support structure and real-time proactive security measures,” says Guistwite. It essentially creates a true hybrid cloud portfolio and offers their customers an expandable set of dedicated cloud resources.

Today, there are numerous managed service providers who white label their cloud products from others. Customers who choose to adopt such solutions often deal with unorganized support teams unable to respond quickly and cohesively when problems occur. That’s where HighPoint sets itself apart. The firm owns its infrastructure from the ground up, employing multi-disciplined support teams and security engineers. This means that “HighPoint has all the needed expertise within the periphery of their organization, creating an efficient, one-stop solution for businesses looking to reap the benefits of cloud services,” says Guistwite. “The Volaré Cloud solution comes fully managed and optimized for high-performance, and offers our customers an expandable set of dedicated cloud resources that are both secure and compliant.”HighPoint has been able to integrate 75 percent of its managed service customers into their cloud environment, which speaks volumes about the level of services being offered and their customer satisfaction rate.

A Fully Managed and Dedicated Private Cloud Partner

The Volaré Cloud Solution is designed to minimize the traditional complications of cloud integrations by offering high touch, fully customizable support services under a simple ‘all you can eat’ model.

HighPoint assigns a project and technical leads that do most of the heavy lifting on clients’ behalf, coordinating with application developers and manufacturers to ensure that every business-critical application is migrated and supported safely and methodically.

Guistwite highlights an instance where an oil and gas company was struggling with their previous cloud provider. After a thorough analysis, HighPoint discovered their provider never took the time to understand the customer’s business applications. The provider had sold them a “cookie-cutter” cloud environment that did not match their business needs. HighPoint delivered a fully customized solution centered on a regulatory compliant redundant cloud environment and WAN solution to properly support their business-critical operations nationwide. The solution demanded fully integrated enterprise services to support everything from wireless inventory management applications to virtualized desktops and published applications. HighPoint’s hyper-connected cloud solutions supported the firm’s private cloud environment as well as their public cloud infrastructure, WAN infrastructure, Active Directory infrastructure, and ongoing network and perimeter security programs, resulting in a 30 percent cost reduction for the customer.

HighPoint’s first focus is on the business of a prospective customer and not the technology. They try to gain an understanding of the customer’s corporate DNA and build their technical solutions from there. The solutions they craft start and finish with precise measurements that are intrinsic to the customer’s specific business. Whether it is shortening time-to-production on a new product or improving real-time collaboration efforts to become more efficient, the results are born out of the advancement of their business and not their technology. I personally challenge my team to walk out of a customer discussion with a clear sense of their business as that is where we always start our value proposition,” says Guistwite.

Guistwite credits HighPoint’s executive team for maintaining the company’s focus on delivering outstanding customer service and innovation in tandem with their clients’ business objectives. The firm’s engineers have industry experience plus advanced certifications for implementing best-in-class solutions.“Our recognized team of experts have delivered hundreds of cloud solutions and specializes in managing complex enterprise applications, integrations, and customizations, and hybrid deployments,” mentions Guistwite.

Giving a sneak-peak into the firm’s future, Guistwite elucidates that the Volaré Cloud Solution, along with their entire IT Managed Services portfolio, will continue to grow nationwide in 2018 and beyond. “Two years ago, we were in three to five states and today we have client locations in almost twenty states across the US,” informs Guistwite. “Over the next years, HighPoint will grow but its mission statement will always be: to provide cost-effective and industry-leading hyper-converged cloud and IaaS solutions to their clients with a focus on premier customer service, customizable solutions, and business-critical availability.”