PulseMove
To address a lagging market position, we supported a leading UK fitness equipment manufacturer to reinvent their fitness technology platform using Umbraco and Amazon Web Services.
Clients Challenge
Pulse Fitness, based in the UK, is a manufacturer with an award winning portfolio of fitness equipment with ranges including cardiovascular, strength and plate-loaded. Their fitness equipment incorporates the very best in British design alongside the most innovative and advanced ideas from around the world.
Over 10 years Pulse Fitness had developed a fitness technology system enabling gym users to access fitness data using kiosk technology. Initially industry leading, the world had moved on and their competitors platforms were cloud based with connected web apps and mobile apps. During the procurement process for their strength and cardiovascular equipment Pulse were challenged by prospective clients to provide a solution with cloud based technology, web apps and mobile apps.
Our Solution
Carbon Six Digital were responsible for re-architecting the PulseMove technology platform in 2014. Moving from a world where customer databases were stored in single tenanted on-premise MySql databases, we designed a multi-tenanted, cloud-based data architecture based on SQL Server on Amazon Web Services.
Working with a multidisciplinary team, including the client and their design and technology partners, we designed an architecture based on well established technologies including .NET, SQL Server, and RESTful APIs with the Open Source CMS Umbraco at its core.
Where possible the new architecture made use of existing assets. Our goal was to web enable the technology not reinvent the wheel.
In the space of 6 months we delivered a new WebApp, public facing marketing and signup website, and API facilitating the parallel development of Mobile Apps for IOS and Android by a third party development agency.
In order to improve the ability of Pulse to deliver safely and reliably, on time every time, to its clients, we put in place key IT processes. These processes spanned project management and release management across the entire platform applying to Pulse and its product management, design and development team as well as third party suppliers. Based on industry standards such as ITIL and Agile, these processes have resulted in significant improvements in reliability of the platform and frequency of releases, getting product enhancements into the hands of end customers quickly and efficiently.
Impact on the Customer
Critically these new technologies enabled Pulse to win a multi-million pound project for the refit of the entire gym and associated equipment for one of Pulses closest and most well-established gym operating customers. Since then, Pulse and Carbon Six Digital have successfully rolled out the PulseMove cloud-based platform across more than 75 customer sites, including over 50 local authority leisure centres. By using established Open Source Software and cloud-based infrastructure Pulse now have a platform for growth across the UK, Europe and China.
To date the new technologies have been implemented in over 30 countries across 6 continents. The tracking app has logged more than 50 million in-gym activities in over 100,000 active users, with trends showing a 50% year on year increase for both.
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