Covid-19: Nutanix HCI Enabled JM Finn to Work Remotely in Week

Investment management firm JM Finn & Co Ltd has selected Nutanix, Inc. to deliver a private cloud infrastructure that is secure, flexible and reliable to nimbly support changing business needs.

Its IT infrastructure was recently put to the test when the company needed to support remote working for all employees in response to COVID-19 – all in about a week.

As many companies focus on how to best maintain BC during this difficult time, organizations in highly regulated industries, like financial institutions, struggle with enabling remote work securely while ensuring compliance. In fact prior to COVID-19 only 5% of all workers completely worked from home.

The ability to work remotely in the financial services industry has always been dependent on security and safeguarding access to customers’ financial information.

At JM Finn, most employees, especially power users, like dealers and traders requiring performing machines, did not work remotely. However, the team had recently undergone an IT modernization initiative, leveraging Nutanix’s HCI platform to power their private cloud, with a focus on virtualization and software-defined solutions. This enabled them to deliver a VDI to all essential employees, including power users.

“Our infrastructure was already completely virtualized which made a big difference in enabling remote work,” said Jon Cosson, head of IT and chief information security officer, JM Finn. “Having the right infrastructure in place is extremely important and it is evident that many financial firms have not prioritized this. Our Nutanix private cloud infrastructure, which powers all of our workloads including VDI, played an integral part in keeping our employees safe and productive while working remotely.“

One of the biggest challenges for any financial company looking to set up a remote environment is how to serve power users. This can be  complex as they require powerful machines with zero tolerance for lag or downtime, a lot of storage and memory, and 4 to 8 monitors. Many firms are not able to allow these power users to work remotely, but the team at JM Finn is entirely set up to work from home without sacrificing performance or security thanks to some key tools.

Ensuring the firm was compliant with regulatory requirements was another concern for the JM Finn IT team. Many cloud solutions, which companies are leveraging to deliver remote work platforms, do not ensure regulatory compliance. With their Nutanix private cloud infrastructure, its team can help ensure all necessary data and information is stored locally and securely. With an eye on security, the team also strengthened two-factor authentication and built a conference call system.

“Thanks to their Nutanix-powered private cloud, the JM Finn team is now set up to work remotely with full confidence that it is in a secure environment,” said Dom Poloniecki, GM sales, Western Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa, Nutanix. “Having the right infrastructure in place, as well as a software-defined solution that can easily adapt to changing business needs, allowed them to quickly respond to the current crisis to ensure the business could continue delivering to its customers.“

Preparing for the unexpected allowed JM Finn to respond to COVID-19 without causing business disruptions. Leveraging a software-defined private cloud infrastructure, they were able to deliver remote work to their employees securely and in record time.