Highpoint Technology Group
Crafting Business Enabling Solutions through the Power of Microsoft Technologies

As technology evolves and becomes more integral to most organizations, the role of the MSP continues to migrate towards consultancy and strategic guidance and less towards selling individual products or applications. CEO’s are challenging their organizations to stop viewing IT departments and platforms as simply overhead. Instead they are challenging their leadership to make them differentiators in their own competitive marketplace. Headquartered in Houston, TX, the Highpoint Technology Group is a nation wide managed services and consulting company that helps customers excel by leveraging their vast expertise in IT Managed Services, business applications, consulting, cloud services and outsourcing. The company’s philosophy is to first focus 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 be shortening time to production on a new product by developing a customized SharePoint solution, 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. Whoever said business isn’t personal clearly never worked as an MSP,” says Steve Guistwite, President and CEO, Highpoint.

The company’s focus is built on four pillars—managed services, consulting, cloud services, and outsourcing. These four pillars incorporate customized Microsoft technologies as a key component. Ranging from their readily consumable public cloud offering to solution specific infrastructure consulting engagements, Highpoint continually strives to uncover new methods of building business-enabling solutions through the power of their Microsoft partnership.

Highpoint’s practice is a bit different than some in that they do not spend a great deal of time trying to change a customer to meet their capabilities like some managed service organizations. Nor do they accept any customer opportunity be default.

“It is important for us to bring on customers that are a fit for our culture. This allows us to have out consultants’ work closely with our customers and build a high degree of trust in a relatively short period of time,” asserts Guistwite. Highpoint also provides strategic consulting services as a “built in” component of all MSP engagements. If a customer has a new application rollout, or is expanding locations, Highpoint will help provide an IT strategy built specifically for the customer’s need, all free of charge. Highpoint allows customers to maintain agility by structuring services in an easy-to-consume manner—without the fear of being locked into an excessively long term agreement.

“We focus on staying true to our core values—clarity, integrity, and accountability,” asserts Guistwite. For instance, one of their customers was languishing in inefficiencies due to several failed attempts at integrating technology into their business. Highpoint addressed their concerns by migrating their “backoffice” to Office 365 and workflow-based SharePoint sites to jumpstart their ongoing operations. Highpoint also upgraded all workstations to Windows 8.1, utilizing Microsoft Security Center to keep their systems more secure. On the network side, Highpoint incorporated a new network infrastructure and instituted a complete set of business continuity practices around their upgraded Windows server platforms. Highpoint saved the customer over 30 percent in ongoing expenses.

Whoever said business isn’t personal clearly never worked as a managed service provider

In the immediate future, the company is looking to expand their GSA Schedule 70 certification as a primary contractor for Federal, State, and Local government projects. The company is also incredibly excited about its consulting efforts in support of K-12 education.