Tradition-ICAP Volbroker System Opts for With Violin Memory

Violin Memory, Inc. announced that Tradition-ICAP Ltd, a voice broker and electronic platform for inter-dealer trading of Foreign Exchange (FX) Options, has chosen its all-flash arrays to support its Hybrid FX Options trading system – Volbroker.

With the Violin platform, Tradition-ICAP is able to exceed their client service levels, as well as achieve operational efficiencies by reducing Oracle database rebuild and maintenance times by over 40X, from two days down to under an hour.

Volbroker was designed for and by professional FX option traders to give real-time access to price information, execution reports and a host of other information. Volbroker serves over 150 large investment bank clients, and operates out of London, Frankfurt, Copenhagen, New York, Singapore, and Tel Aviv.

The FX ecosystem and supporting technology has changed over the last two decades. Requirements have changed and trading volumes have increased. The data that is processed for option trading is high on volume and detail and requires a reliable, available, and performance storage solution in order to meet service levels and stay ahead of the competition. Tradition-ICAP’s Volbroker platform has always had a heavy dependence on storage performance and while they were running the entire system cached in memory, the performance of their traditional storage was becoming a critical problem that they could no longer afford.

“Even when loading everything into memory there were times that data would leave the cache and the Oracle database had to directly access the storage subsystem, and at peak times, the entire system would spend excessive amounts of time waiting for our traditional storage subsystem,” said Terry Benson, COO, Tradition-ICAP. “We needed a solution that eliminated the storage bottleneck and delivered consistent low latency and high IO/s at all times. Violin all-flash arrays exceeded our expectations and are clearly the best choice for our business. Using Violin arrays we have eliminated any worries about supporting our growing business, and we can concentrate on developing the new technologies that will help our customers to be even more successful in their trading.“

Beyond providing the requisite storage performance for their application needs, the Violin flash storage solutions revealed problems in their database architecture that were previously imperceptible to the IT team. Specifically, the team found that a number of database queries were less than efficiently written and could be fine-tuned for more efficient processing of the data.

With Violin, Tradition-ICAP’s customers will be able to rely on the performance of Volbroker at even the busiest of times. This reliable access is critical and provides them with a competitive advantage; without it, traders must resort to less efficient and more time-consuming methods of execution. The second, yet equally important outcome is that Tradition-ICAP developers are free to develop new and innovative products, rather than constantly battling with unsuitable disk-based storage systems.

“Violin all-flash arrays are perfect for time-sensitive applications, such as foreign exchange trading, where a millisecond is worth hundreds of millions of pounds,” added Mick Bradley, MD, Violin Memory EMEA. “The solution’s reliability, high-performance and data availability characteristics are critical to this market, where even a fews delay can have major financial consequences.“