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Reshaping Agile Trading
13 June 2024
Having secure access to trading platforms from anywhere, at any time, gives traders enhanced agility and can reduce long-term operational costs. It is also critical for disaster recovery and business continuity. But agile working in such a data-intensive sector does come with a number of challenges, such as compliance and data security.
How can traders ensure secure, resilient access to business-critical platforms whenever and wherever they work, without prohibitive costs?
Let’s look at the three main compute options available for traders and how they are deployed.
Compute on the desk – high performance desktops
The first option is to house all the power on the desk, using high-performance workstation computers that are built to deliver the processing power needed for trading.
This is the traditional way of doing things, but with the rise of agile working, high performance workstations lack the flexibility required to suit modern working patterns. These hot and heavy workstations are not portable and have significant dedicated resources that are not easily shared with any other systems or services.
Users would need one desktop in each working location, which is not always practical for agile workers due to the cost of each desktop.
Compute in the cloud
For greater mobility, products and applications can be deployed in the public cloud. Cloud compute can rival the performance of on-premises solutions without the hardware capital requirements, centralising trader activity from a single location.
However, in the heavily regulated financial sector, there are challenges to consider. Public cloud compute is more susceptible to data security and data privacy concerns, while access to mission-critical platforms is dependent on service providers. Costs can also be prohibitive when taking into account the powerful and dedicated resources required for data-critical sectors.
Private/hybrid cloud with centralised workstations
The other solution is to have centralised remote workstations, rack mounted in a local data centre or equipment room. Individual traders can then benefit from a broad range of software protocols and powerful Zero Client or Ultra Thin Client desktop, giving seamless remote access and maximum flexibility. Additional Zero Clients can be deployed at home without prohibitive costs.
Remote workstations move the compute away from the user without impacting performance, enabling remote working whilst securing all the data within the data centre. They can be co-located with the rest of the core infrastructure, including market data feeds, and it also means users have the resources they need with a lower power and cooling requirement.
Providing remote access from any location to a centralised function needs careful consideration over how the end-to-end architecture is secured and centrally managed, because remote working can introduce variables such as external devices which are not under the control of the IT teams.
However, if deployed correctly it provides a flexible, secure and efficient solution for high performance remote working.
Want to know more about compute infrastructure solutions for financial trading? Speak to our team.