Options IT is a leading provider of private financial cloud services to more than 120 investment banks, broker dealers, proprietary trading firms, and traditional and alternative investment management firms across Europe, North America and Asia.
Business need:
Provide clients with a hosted market data and trade execution service that offers ultra-low latency connectivity and high throughput systems performance to enable them to act quickly on small changes in price and maximize profit.
Solution:
Options IT deployed new blade servers in its global data center locations to support flexible, scalable private cloud capabilities within its proprietary Options PIPE platform.
Benefits:
Enabled Options IT to provide a custom-built, private cloud computing model for its clients, establishing the PIPE platform as a competitive staple for financial institutions. The PIPE Private Financial Cloud makes it possible for Options IT’s clients to respond rapidly to emerging opportunities in the fast-moving global capital markets system.
Case Study
Options IT is a leading provider of private financial cloud services to more than 120 investment banks, broker dealers, proprietary trading firms, and traditional and alternative investment management firms across Europe, North America and Asia.
Empowering its clients to overcome shrinking margins
During the last several years, increased automated trading volumes and thinner spreads on international stock exchanges had been driving transaction volumes up and per-trade profit margins down for trading firms. Options IT wanted to offer its clients an optimized low-latency market data and connectivity service so they could quickly capitalize on small movements in price and improve trading profit margins.
Transforming IT architecture to offer a flexible, scalable solution
Using IBM systems technology, Options IT deployed new blade servers in its global data center locations to support private cloud capabilities. Branded as the Options PIPE Private Financial Cloud services platform, these private cloud computing capabilities can facilitate rapid strategy deployments to ensure rapid response to emerging opportunities in the fast-moving global capital market system. The PIPE platform architecture reduces management costs, lowers energy impact and increases scalability for the technology provider. PIPE clients are able to make IT costs an operational expense rather than a capital expenditure, which removes the risk associated with IT ownership, management and maintenance. Clients are able to focus on their service delivery and business objectives.
Integrating the system architecture to accommodate rapid changes in demand
To help deliver the performance, agility and cost-efficiency that clients demand, the PIPE Private Financial Cloud is based on a versatile, redundant hardware infrastructure. The environment includes embedded Ethernet and fabric switches, power supplies and cabling, and a single management console for all systems. This integrated system architecture and consolidated management interface significantly simplifies system administration.
When a client requires more capacity, Options IT can easily plug an additional compatible blade server into an existing chassis in any one of its 18 global data centers, immediately integrating the server with the existing platform. The rapid expansion of the PIPE platform enables the provider to deliver high levels of performance at very short notice.
Paul Bryant, CTO of Options IT says, “The cross-compatibility is excellent; we can run a mixture of different blades within a single chassis without any issues, and we can move workload from one blade to another... As a result, it’s possible for us to meet very precise client requirements as and when they arise, without having to embark on periodic hardware replacement projects.”
High-security, high-performance computing power
In order to deliver the required performance and responsiveness, the Options PIPE platform is built on a highly versatile hardware infrastructure leveraging IBM BladeCenter servers. These systems are accessed via high-quality, low-latency private circuits, providing both excellent performance and a high level of security.
Automating the delivery of new services
Beyond simply adding physical capacity to the PIPE platform, Options IT can also rapidly meet its clients’ changing performance needs by being able to add or remove system capacity and service diversity on-demand.
When a client requires connectivity to a new market or a new trading application through its PIPE Velocity service, Options IT is able to quickly provision the services on the PIPE platform. Velocity provides an ultra-low latency market-data, connectivity and application-hosting service for all major markets across North America, Europe and Asia.
Changing the game by providing high performance trading technology services in the private cloud
The PIPE Velocity service provides clients with a fully optimized ultra-low latency market data and application hosting service for firms executing high frequency trading strategies. Velocity, like all Options PIPE services, is delivered as a private cloud solution. So when a client sees an opportunity, Options IT can help them exploit it quickly.
“The PIPE platform helped us meet demanding deadlines for go-live of our new strategy area,” says the CTO of a U.S. hedge fund manager. “Instead of trying to build the IT infrastructure ourselves we are using a proven platform that already had the characteristics we needed - many of which would otherwise have been outside the project budget.”
Becoming an operational staple for clients seeking a competitive advantage
Options IT helps its clients take advantage of global trading opportunities that previously may have been out of reach due to lack of technology agility or resources. By leveraging a specialized, private cloud computing platform for their most demanding technology requirements, financial institutions can gain a competitive advantage through improved responsiveness and lower IT costs.
“Our partnership with IBM makes a significant contribution to our ability to deliver the levels of service that our clients need,” comments Bryant. “The flexibility and manageability provided by the IBM BladeCenter platform is very important, helping us to provide new systems rapidly and manage them efficiently.”
Designed for Data
A single management console within the systems greatly simplifies systems management, while the cross-compatibility of the solution makes it possible for Options IT to run several different blades within a single chassis or move workload between blades to meet specific clients’ needs with no issues.
Tuned to the Task
Additional capacity can be added in minutes with automated provisioning of network and processor resources.
Managed in the Cloud
The Options PIPE platform is built on a highly secure, versatile hardware infrastructure leveraging IBM BladeCenter servers. Capacity can be adjusted on demand, enabling Options IT to rapidly meet client’s fluctuating needs.
Driving Innovation
Service-level and performance-based offerings enable end-clients to focus on their service delivery and business objectives and not IT management and maintenance.
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