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FinTech Trends Newsletter Week 14th August – 18th August 2017
Benefits of working with a Managed Services Provider (MSP)
partner our clients, alternative investment, hedge fund, private equity and financial firms so they can grow their businesses and comply with the FCA, MiFID II & GDPR data
Imagine how large your IT department would have to be to fulfil every one of your Firm’s IT demands: internal systems, telecoms, availability, data manage- ment, back up & disaster recovery, business continuity and regulatory compli- ance, etc.
It would outstrip every other department! There would be budget and head- count chaos. And what’s more, it would take the focus of your business away from what it actually does and, instead, towards just managing the supporting technology. Not a good trade.
A Managed Services Provider (MSP), like Storm IT Financial, helps to bridge the gap between the capacity of your IT department and the increasing demand for fast-moving, stable, high-performance business technology.
It does this by creating solutions for the complexities of private, public and hybrid clouds. It uses its expertise and resources to bundle up technologies, soft- ware and solutions and provide them ‘as a service’ (aaS). The primary value of this is to provide competitive advantage. To make the most of the capacity of your IT department to add value to your business, rather than dealing with the day-to-day.
Also you can manage “IT as a Utility” and see it as Operational Expenditure (Opex) rather than Capital Expenditure (Capex). But why use a ‘managed’ service? Why not do it yourself? Here are reasons why:
*Infrastructure on demand – MSPs have whole libraries of solutions ready and waiting which attendant security and compliance solu- tions, requiring only a little tweaking for each client’s individual needs from their expert, knowledgeable and dedicated staff who’ll design a plan for you. This means that managed cloud solutions can be deployed much, much quicker, saving huge amounts of time, effort and money.
*Guaranteed Service Level Agreement (SLA) – You’ll get what you pay for, no added extras. These are selectable based on the level of guarantee required.
*Proactive support – A trustworthy MSP, like Storm IT Financial, will monitor your infrastructure constantly and proactively begin reso- lution activities in the event of a drop in performance or a fault. The problem will be fixed before you even knew it existed.
*Assisted ‘best practice’ design – An MSP’s broad range of experience and dedicated team of experts means that it can offer the best
in solution design and implementation. Their teams of Solution Architects design business-focused cloud solutions all day, every day.
*Offload non-differentiating functions – Some IT activities are just about keeping the lights on. Others are contributing directly to the success of the business. MSPs help you spend less time on the former, and more on the latter, resulting in a better business.
*Capacity planning – Fed up of purchasing large amounts of spare IT or Data capacity that may only be used as & when ? Your MSP is
able to assist with planning how much capacity & data you will need and flexing your infrastructure capacity up or down on demand.
*Predictable costs – As a result of capacity planning, you know when you will need extra IT capacity and, thanks to the SLA, how much that will cost. This is incredibly helpful for accurate financial forecasting and budgeting.
*Expert guide for future road-mapping – Future-proofing your infrastructure with expert help is one of the best ways of ensuring the resilience of your business going forward. Being stuck with legacy on-premises equipment in a fast-changing marketplace can create serious problems for businesses.
*Economies of scale – Supplier relationships and wholesale purchasing allow MSPs to deliver the best possible value for money to its individual customers and give less headaches and relationships to handle for the client.
Putting the ‘managed’ in Managed Services Provider – The best sign of a good Managed Services Provider is their ability to understand your business and deliver a bespoke solution that fits your firm’s needs. Keeping some business-critical applications in house or offload entire IT functions to your MSP. Whatever combination is best, the end result will be a flexible, managed cloud solution that is tailored to your exact Firm’s needs in a way that leaves you to concentrate on your core business. When you find the right mix, working with an MSP, like Storm IT Financial as a partner, can be a game changer for your business.
For more information on Hedge Fund, Asset Management, Private Equity & Alternative Investment data management, telecoms, call recording solutions, cyber security & firewall & failover advice, cloud & IT Services, feel free to contact Storm IT Financial.
Storm IT Financial FinTech News & Trends picks: Week 14th August – 18th August 2017
How Azure Security Center aids in detecting good applications being used maliciously
Azure Security Center helps detect malicious activity:
Financial services: Reduce the cyber risk from within
Financial services organisations are at an inherently greater risk of cyber attacks due to….:
https://www.finextra.com/blogposting/14415/financial-services-reduce-the-cyber-risk-from-within
MiFID II – Finding the way to compliant communications
This has been a long time coming, and despite the looming deadline, firms are still trying to work out what they need to do..:
https://www.finextra.com/blogposting/14407/mifid-ii—finding-the-way-to- compliant-communications
Goldman Adds Pay, Perks in Silicon Valley War for Tech Talent
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is upping its game to lure top technology talent:
JP Morgan Hires New AI Expert in Push Towards Next Wave of Trading
The move marks push by major banks to using machine learning to ana- lyse risks and market behaviour:
Private bank adds Ether and Litecoin to client crypto cash service
Falcon Private Bank has expanded the range of cryptocurrencies its cli- ents can hold in their portfolios following integration of Bitcoin:
Brevan Howard and Tudor scrap Mifid licences
Hedge fund giants Brevan Howard and Tudor Investment have ditched their Mifid licences:
Hedge fund Whitebox opts for Broadridge’s hosted platform for front, middle and back-office operations
Hedge fund Whitebox Advisors has chosen Broadridge to provide a fully hosted and integrated platform:
Veracen teams with Linedata to launch fintech plat- form for institutional investors
Veracen has entered into a global co-development, co-marketing and collaboration agreement:
Liquidnet makes strategic tech hire to support Virtu- al High Touch MiFID II solutions
Liquidnet appoints Patrick Strobel to be responsible for IT emphasising on Virtual High Touch MiFID II solutions:
Morgan Stanley’s diversity-focused innovation lab welcomes first cohort
Morgan Stanley’s new innovation lab onboarded five start-ups for its three-month accelerator programme:
Non-tech companies are about to be the biggest in- vestors in tech for the first time –
and finance and Goldman Sachs are leading the way:
