Top 20 Hedge Fund Selects Wesley Clover Solutions All-In-One IP Communications Platform for New York and Hong Kong Offices
Profile: Connecticut-based global, diversified investment manager with US$12B AUM deploys IP communications system for traders and office staff in New York City Office
This hedge fund firm, in the midst of a project to relocate key branch offices in New York City and Hong Kong, was seeking a voice communications platform that would be suitable for both their trading floor teams and office staff. The key decision-making criteria included: that the system could be easily managed, offered extremely high reliability and that the vendor have the global resources to manage the deployment and support of both systems according to stringent service level commitments their mission-critical trading operations required.
The initial system
configurations for New York City and Hong Kong include:
| Description |
| 2u rack-mount dual-bus (TDM/IP) System Controller including: |
|
| Resilient System Controller (Active-Active Design) |
| IP Turrets (rugged, high-performance trading devices w/two handset, 96 buttons, 200 speed dials) for the Trading Floor Team |
| IP Phones for Executives and Support Staff |
| Embedded Voice Mail System |
The resilient System Controller design (installed in the same equipment room) provides the customer with 99.9999% availability of the System Controller environment. The System Controllers are actively synchronizing databases in real-time via System Data Synchronization (SDS) which ensures that, in the event of a failure, the database of the back-up system is 100% current.
After evaluating platforms from several suppliers, including incumbent system providers for their headquarters office, the firm selected Wesley Clover Solutions for these reasons:
- Unique ability in supporting both back office and trading floor applications in a single platform
- The small, consolidated system footprint and scalability within the 2u rack and modest power requirements meant that they could save space and minimize build out costs
- The browser-based system management platform enables IT staff to manage and make changes from wherever they are working, at any time of day
- The low “per position” cost offered by mixing and matching a variety of IP devices offered a significant cost-savings when compared with deploying a separate PBX and specialty trading turret system.
- The single system increases productivity and ease of collaboration among trading floor and non-trading floor staff by having all staff on the same system.
- The domain expertise, service orientation and track record of the vendor with a focus on supporting financial trading firms made the decision-makers comfortable they were working with a service provider that understood the mission-critical nature of their business.
By selecting the Wesley Clover Solutions single platform system the customer now has a resilient, advanced IP communications platform capable of supporting all back office and trading floor staff that is normalized within their IT environment and does not require specialized certifications or training to do day-to-day system management.
The Voice Communications Platform (VCP) offers an array of more than 500 features, functions and applications, including unified communications and messaging. The system can be integrated with various enterprise applications like Microsoft Office Communication Server (OCS), Active Directory, Outlook and SharePoint as well as RIM’s Blackberry mobile devices. The system is scalable to thousands of IP devices in a compact rack-mount system controller that can be deployed in a proprietary appliance or on industry-standard servers. The system is also the first voice communications platform certified to work with VMware virtualization solutions.
