Fidessa provides 85% of the world’s premier financial institutions with their multi-asset trading and investment infrastructure, market data and analysis, and decision making and workflow technology.

Transactions worth $20 trillion flow across Fidessa’s global network each year. Fidessa’s advanced products and services cover the whole lifecycle of the trading process for both the buy-side and sell-side, from low-latency trading tools to settlement, compliance and risk management. The company works with global institutions and investment banks through to boutique brokers and niche hedge funds.

Fidessa, which is recognised as a thought leader in its sector, has set the benchmark with mission critical products and services. It invests heavily in leading-edge, integrated solutions and as a result has been able to deliver around 25% compound growth since it listed on the stock market in 1997.

Overview and Objectives

Fidessa’s network infrastructure underpins the company’s hosted operations and its connectivity is a critical component of its global services. To maintain its competitiveness in such a fast paced sector, the company regularly evaluates its existing network providers to ensure customers are receiving:

• The lowest possible latencies between strategic markets and trading locations
• Stable, reliable and highly available connectivity
• Maximum business value and excellent customer service.

Fidessa first engaged BSO Network Solutions (BSO) in 2013 when searching for a provider to deliver a totally diverse route between Singapore and Hong Kong that both regional and global customers could leverage.

Challenges

One of the most significant challenges for Fidessa’s IT team was navigating the complexities posed by Singapore’s telecommunications market.

Mark Bever, Global Head – Data Centers and Procurement, at Fidessa explained, “Singapore is a critical location for many of our customers, however connecting such a complex region was always going to be challenging from a network perspective. We felt success would be dependent on finding a provider with the necessary specialist skills and knowledge of Singapore. Essentially, we needed a team to guide us through the region’s particularities as well as source the appropriate connectivity.”

Alongside operational and cultural challenges, other considerations included:

• Maintenance heavy circuit, requiring commitment from Fidessa’s internal technical team to resolve any issues
• Technical requirements, including the need for new diverse switching technology and ultra-low latencies between locations
• Managing Fidessa’s clients’ expectations on reliability and availability of the route whilst experiencing on-going performance issues

The Solution

To ease Fidessa’s concerns, BSO designed a staggered sourcing and deployment framework. This included BSO utilising its established relationships in the region and extensive knowledge of global intra-region connectivity. The Singapore <> Hong Kong network included three stages:

• Identify a suitable network link on the BSO backbone with the necessary switching technology
• Negotiate a commercially beneficial contract for Fidessa and its customers
• Manage the service delivery and testing process, to ensure a smooth transition and to fulfil deadline expectations

The network route was operational in just three months. After the success of this project, Fidessa felt confident in BSO’s capabilities to increase its work together. This extended to transatlantic connectivity, additional network routes and data centre services in key locations:

• London <> New York
• New York <> Chicago
• London <> Hong Kong
• Hong Kong <> Tokyo

Results and Next Steps

Mark Bever continued, “BSO really stands out for just how far the team will go to ensure we are happy. They understand how critical connectivity is to our clients’ trading and investment objectives. Their assistance has been invaluable in improving our latencies on key customer routes. BSO’s specialism in the financial sector gave us the confidence to entrust our connectivity to a team that never sits on its laurels.”

BSO has just recently supported Fidessa in its move to a new data centre location in Hong Kong.

As BSO continually refines and develops its backbone network for the financial market, these on-going improvements will allow Fidessa to take further advantage of BSO’s unique position. Likely benefits could include improved performance and reliability, lower latencies and cost reductions.

Additionally, BSO provides a single point of contact within its dedicated account management team, ensuring quick and focused help. Fidessa also has the reassurance of 24/7 access to BSO’s Network Operations Centre (NOC) support team.