Continuity Edge — Offline WMS/TMS Failover-as-a-Service

E-commerce Platforms
🔥
10/10
Demand Score
Even brief WMS/TMS or network outages halt operations, incurring massive labor idle time and carrier rework fees.
🌊
8/10
Blue Ocean
Competition Level
💰
$3k-18k
Price/Month
Predicted customer spend
⏱️
16 days
Time to MVP
Difficulty: Hard

The Problem

Expensive Upgrades Required

Competitor Landscape

  • Manhattan Active WM (limited resiliency features)
  • Blue Yonder WMS
  • Korber/HighJump WMS
  • Gremlin (chaos engineering)
  • Zerto (DR)

Must-Have Features for MVP

Connectors for major WMS/TMS with near-real-time sync
Local OLTP store with write-ahead logging and conflict policies
Offline PWA for scanning, picking, packing, receiving
Carrier label server with cached authorization and rate fallback
Emergency manifest/BOL generation and deferred EDI queue
Auto failover/failback with operator prompts
Chaos drill scheduler and resiliency scorecards
Audit trail and reconciliation dashboard post-incident

⚠️ Potential Challenges

  • Vendor data model access and change tracking
  • Carrier label certification for offline mode
  • Data consistency and conflict resolution on re-sync
  • Site IT constraints and security hardening
  • Ensuring performance for high-SKU, high-velocity operations

Risk Level: High

🎯 Keys to Success

  • Zero missed carrier pickups during outages
  • >90% of core workflows operable offline
  • Reconciliation error rate < 0.3% of transactions
  • RTO < 2 minutes and RPO < 60 seconds for mirrored data
  • >50% reduction in outage-related labor idle time
  • Annualized avoided downtime ROI > 5x subscription cost

Ready to Build This?

This hard-difficulty project could be your next micro-SaaS success.