Options IT, a leading provider of high-performance financial technology Infrastructure-as-a-Service to buyside and sellside firms, has leveraged IBM (NYSE: IBM) to deliver private cloud technology to financial services clients.
Options IT private cloud solutions enable clients such as hedge funds, proprietary trading shops or trading desks inside of investment banks to take advantage of global trading opportunities by facilitating a virtual plug and play technology environment for their trading models and other financial applications via the Options PIPE platform. By leveraging an existing global platform, firms are able to greatly reduce the time to market for launching new trading strategies.
"As the global markets have become increasingly fragmented, trading strategies have become increasingly reliant on sophisticated trading and risk management models," said Nigel Kneafsey, CEO, Options IT. "And as the costs of managing the trading strategy have risen, we've seen a dramatic shift in the number of firms outsourcing the underlying technology infrastructure, management and market connectivity needed to run a competitive financial services business. With the Options PIPE clients can plug their applications into an existing private cloud infrastructure, pay only for the resources they use, and have the ability to move their strategies around the globe, on-demand, when the opportunities arise."
"In today's competitive global business environment, companies are recognising the need to reduce complexity and cost in order to increase their business agility," said Andy Park, Cloud Leader, IBM UK and Ireland. "To do so, many organisations are accessing key business applications through cloud deployments. IBM expects the global cloud computing market to grow at a compounded annual rate of 28 percent from $47 billion in 2008 to $126 billion by 2012."
Options IT's private cloud infrastructure platform leverages IBM BladeCenter technology, located at each of its 18 global data centres. Rapid provisioning of new servers enables Options IT to quickly scale services up or down depending on market conditions and customer demand. The compact architecture minimises rack-space reqquirements, reducing costs, and enables Options IT to pass those efficiencies along to their clients.