Reducing the need for on-premises infrastructure while improving efficiency is saving the firm time and money while complying with regulatory policies

While its existing system was versatile, a Taiwan-based futures trading firm providing a platform for international and domestic futures trading wanted to modernize its IT systems to streamline the customer trading experience.

IBF Futures (Taiwan) had also wanted to cut its reliance on physical machines and free-up space on premises, and in doing so reduce its carbon footprint. Stricter regulations from the Financial Supervisory Commission in Taiwan also meant that the firm needed to implement two-factor authentication.

According to Chao-Hsin Liao, Deputy General Manager of IT, IBF Holdings, the parent company of IBF Futures, the shift to a flexible and scalable cloud-based platform had made it easy for the IT team to deploy a one-time password SMS system for enhanced security. Total cost of ownership has been reduced by 65% (storage) and 95% (machine space). “Since adopting Nutanix’s services, we have saved significant time and manpower. In this year’s second half, we plan to launch a cloud-based service built on the (the vendor’s) hyper-converged infrastructure. Users will gain access to historical transaction data on the platform that will support their investment decisions,” said Liao.

Besides making better use of resources by streamlining manpower and operations to handle increasing workloads without requiring more staff, the IT team can use a centralized dashboard to save time on routine maintenance, gather insights to facilitate faster customer onboarding, and allocate VM resources quickly (within 30 seconds) as needed to process customer requests quickly. The latter process used to take at least one month.

Said Daniel Chang, Managing Director, Nutanix Hong Kong and Taiwan: “The regulations of the Financial Supervisory commission present financial services companies with the challenge of (digitalizing their data management and security frameworks). We look forward to supporting more financial service companies as they look to elevate their online services.”