The stock market is all about speed. How quickly you can execute a trade can represent the difference between millions made or millions lost. Everyone is looking for an edge – and leveraging a reliable and fast trading platform certainly supplies one.
In today’s volatile financial landscape, Fortra’s Vityl Capacity Management (VCM) can make all the difference in preventing outages and keeping operations running smoothly – even on the busiest of days.
At a global financial services company, VCM helps to provide that significant competitive advantage. This piece explains how VCM is used to deliver a dependable experience for the company’s clients.
The Need for Proactive Capacity Management in Finance
The initial problem was clear: This firm was relying on employees to identify and report shortages in capacity. By the time employees alerted IT leadership to low storage, delays in service had already occurred.
The lack of a formal capacity management process was hurting the business, and an enterprise-wide solution was needed. After researching a cross section of capacity management solutions, VCM was identified as having the capabilities that were needed – and at a reasonable price.
How VCM Earned an Enterprise-Wide Launch
Electronic trading requires an infrastructure that can deliver swift order execution. If the application built on top of the infrastructure was not behaving optimally, it wouldn’t matter how much hardware was thrown at it.
The company sought to evaluate VCM on a smaller scale before performing an enterprise-wide rollout. An application that represented a typical level of infrastructure dependence was selected for proof of concept.
In this proof of concept deployment, VCM successfully pinpointed capacity needs and eliminated the threat of service outages and slowdowns stemming from the application. The success of VCM’s initial launch demanded an enterprise-wide implementation of the solution.
VCM Integrated Numerous Data Sources Seamlessly
“VCM is only as effective as the quality of the data inputted. In our case, the data was dispersed across various locations.” – Company’s Managing Director.
Within the company, there were multiple repositories of data that were largely independent of one another. In such instances, it’s common for IT to have infrastructure data but lack configuration management information that’s necessary for providing complete context in assessing what areas are being impacted by service issues.
Those with access to infrastructure data may be able to identify systems experiencing performance issues, but they don’t know what specific applications are being affected. "In our company's scenario, this scattered data is not useful unless it can be determined whether it impacts the online trading system, account reconciliation, funds management, etc."
By integrating configuration management information and infrastructure data, VCM provides the context necessary to relate IT infrastructure performance to the applications they’re supporting. "In capacity management, the phrase 'Garbage in, garbage out' is pertinent. Primarily, you must source the data accurately, and VCM facilitates this effectively."
VCM Strengthened the Firm’s Reputation
“Before VCM, we were flying blindly in terms of whether we had sufficient capacity or not. With VCM, we can stay ahead of service disruptions caused by traffic spikes. Take CrowdStrike for example. On that day [July 19, 2024], everyone was impacted. But the firms, including ours, that were ready to do business at the start of the day were rewarded for their resilience.”
With VCM, you can be sure that capacity will not be an issue even on the most disruptive of days. The solution allows you to simulate the stress placed on your machines produced by periods of high trade volume. If more capacity is needed, VCM’s “What if” analysis determines the required CPU.
Major events that impact the stock market present firms with an opportunity to prove their reliability and set themselves apart from the competition. In the days following CrowdStrike, this firm passed with flying colors. “Clients want a firm that performs on tough days. VCM gives firms a competitive edge.”
Get Ahead with VCM
The need for reliable and resilient operations applies to all industries. VCM's capacity management technology helps eliminate downtime and slowdowns, keeping your organization ahead of the competition. Schedule your demo today to find out how VCM can help your organization deliver infrastructure and application reliability, ensure consistent performance, and optimize cost.