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CMC Markets

SCC provides highly resilient, scalable technology to support CMC Markets’ fast growing, global online financial trading business.

“In SCC, we have found a partner we can rely on for sound advice on technology”

CMC Markets is a global leader in online derivatives trading with operations in 23 major markets worldwide which has a vision to provide an institutional style of trading that is accessible to all. The company has won numerous prestigious awards from publications such as Investors Chronicle and Shares magazine, and from the UK Government, for its groundbreaking electronic trading platform and the quality of services it provides.

Technology is central to all CMC Markets’ activities and the company’s success is directly attributable to an unrelenting drive to create advantage for its customers through product and technical innovation.

The Challenge

Delivering real-time financial trading to global markets is a highly competitive business that demands fast response, totally reliable 24 by 7 availability and complete security of data from the IT infrastructure. Anything other than faultless service from a provider’s trading systems will result in customers quickly going elsewhere.

The requirement to maintain the required service levels over time while executing heavy workloads, adding new functionality and growing capacity is no easy task and has far reaching implications for the design of the supporting IT systems. When the time came to replace the infrastructure, Bob Collins, Senior Infrastructure and Programme Manager, was faced with the challenge of producing a system specification that would meet the company’s increasingly demanding needs.

Although the old IT infrastructure had served the company well, CMC needed to provide for significant additional business volumes. “With our business growth, we needed greater scalability and capacity. So we decided to create a new, flexible, middle tier infrastructure as a central piece of a major programme of work to build a new best of breed primary data centre,” says Bob.

The key elements that Bob and his team envisaged for the new infrastructure included a state-of-the-art, fault-tolerant architecture, advanced but proven technology and the flexibility to support a variety of services and respond quickly to new business needs. Fully integrated, market leading management tools that enabled remote administration of multiple lights-out data centres were also considered essential.

The Search for a Solution

An early step taken in the search for the right solution was a capacity planning exercise. Although not yet an established supplier, SCC was known and respected by the IT team at CMC Markets and was asked to assist. This important activity provided invaluable detailed sizing information for the requirement specification that was subsequently produced to drive a competitive tendering process.

Four candidates, representing the industry’s leading technology providers, were approached with the requirements. The resulting proposals, together with the organisations responsible, were then subject to a rigorous evaluation process encompassing product specifications, design integrity, project implementation and support capability, commercial terms and, most importantly, the candidates’ track record.

With such a large project at stake, competition for the business was strong and the last stage of the process involved a contest between two very capable providers. “We finally chose SCC for the compelling reason that the HP solution it presented was acclaimed by industry experts, widely adopted and had convincing customer references,” reports Bob. “As our business is completely dependant on technology, proven capability was the key factor in our decision. We were also happy with the competitive pricing and support offered.”

“SCC’s performance during the evaluation process was excellent,” continues Bob. “Its technical people were both responsive and knowledgeable. They produced a well thought-out proposal that met our requirements, giving us confidence for a successful project.”

The Solution

SCC proceeded to work closely with the IT team to create a detailed design for the new infrastructure, which comprised three independent but functionally equivalent systems distributed across two separately located data centres.

The plan was to run the main production environment plus an equivalent capacity planning, support and release testing system at the primary data centre, with a DR system at the other location. Having all systems built with identical hardware greatly reduces risk, as the DR configuration has the capacity to execute the full peak production workload. Also, realistic performance and system behaviour can be accurately replicated for investigation or proving on the test and support environment.

Each system consists of an array of HP BladeSystem c-Class blade enclosures populated by a number of powerful HP ProLiant server blades, with two variants of the server blades being specified to cater for different application requirements. Centralised storage for each system is provided by a large capacity HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) SAN.

A key feature of the solution design is the use of powerful management tools from HP, which enable the entire server and storage infrastructure to be monitored and administered from a single location.

The initial infrastructure included about 250 server blades and approximately 50 terabytes of data storage in a highly resilient, flexible and extensible architecture. Single points of failure are removed by redundant interconnections and reliability is enhanced with redundant cooling fans and power supplies.

Working with SCC

Michael Coe, Technical Project Manager at CMC Markets, took responsibility for managing the implementation of the systems and engaged SCC for the delivery, installation and configuration of the new hardware. “A project of this size and complexity is always challenging,” observes Michael. “The good working relationship SCC established with our team was a key factor in the smooth execution of the implementation. The professional approach and technical expertise of SCC’s people made working with them a pleasure.”

Michael especially appreciates the fact that, because of SCC’s long history of working with HP and its advanced technology, its staff have ready access to in-depth technical information and, when necessary, HP’s product experts. “SCC has been able to provide CMC Markets with a single interface for all technical or supply issues and takes complete ownership for problem resolution,” he comments.

The Results

The highly experienced consultants from SCC were able to quickly resolve the inevitable glitches that occur with any major project and the installation of the infrastructure was completed without any major setbacks. As a result, the business deadline for the availability of the new environment was successfully met.

CMC Markets is delighted with the performance of its new IT infrastructure. The HP equipment has proven to be extremely reliable and there have been no significant issues. The combination of built-in resilience, fault-tolerant system design and full DR capability gives the management at CMC Markets a high degree of confidence that the business will not be compromised by IT failure.

The easy scalability of the blade technology coupled with the large capacity HP EVA storage systems enables quick and cost-effective response to business growth. The architecture is also easy to administer, with powerful HP management tools providing the ability to monitor and manage all four systems from a single, remote location to provide ‘lights-out’ operation.

Having a single, consistent configuration featuring modern equipment reduces the support overhead and the diskless server design means that blades can be freely interchanged in the unlikely event of failure. Support concerns are further diminished as SCC provides a comprehensive support service and takes responsibility for resolving any equipment issues.

An added bonus is the energy efficiency of the advanced HP equipment employed. The cost of power and cooling is an increasingly pressing issue for businesses, and the innovative Thermal Logic power management feature of the HP BladeSystem environment substantially reduces energy requirements through instant thermal monitoring and the intelligent allocation of power.

“CMC Markets now has an efficient, flexible and dependable blade server infrastructure,” says Michael. “In SCC, we have found a partner we can rely on for sound advice on technology and we look forward to working with them again in the future.”