AWS battle of the titans continues as Itiviti begins cloud transformation of its entire trading infrastructure

Exactly as FinanceFeeds highlighted this morning, the monopolistic aspirations of the two e-commerce and internet services giants Alibaba and Amazon Web Services (AWS) is very much in full swing.

Just as ANT, the Chinese newcomer founded by Alibaba magnate Jack Ma looks toward setting a record IPO value for such an entity of $34 billion, and in doing so steps out of the iron curtain environment of China into the global corporate mould, AWS is onboarding even more platforms.

Today, Itiviti, a technology and service provider to financial institutions worldwide, today announced the cloud transformation of its entire electronic trading platform. Itiviti opted for a hybrid private-public cloud strategy to reinforce the modularity and flexibility of the Itiviti platform.

To operate the transformation, the company will collaborate with data center experts Data Canopy and technology and supply chain services specialist Ingram Micro, and leverage Amazon Web Services.

This cloud transformation project will enable Itiviti’s clients to scale computing costs as needed and respond more quickly to abrupt market changes. They will also be able to reach more services through Itiviti’s portals and benefit from facilitated integration of offerings from innovative firms. In addition, storing and sharing data will be simpler.

Immediate benefits for Itiviti’s clients include improved operational performance, increased efficiency, greater security and reduced IT costs. Itiviti will also enable capital markets players to seamlessly extend the deployment of their businesses across the globe by leveraging the new cloud-based trading infrastructure.

According to Antoine Moreau, Head of Infrastructure Services at Itiviti, the company is rolling out a program of investment and innovation across the entire firm. “This cloud initiative follows a massive infrastructure upgrade of our NYFIX order routing network, says Moreau. “This project will increase our platform’s adaptability in a context of accelerated virtualization of the capital markets.”

Itiviti will further leverage technologies such as microservices and containerisation to develop and deliver new services faster and more efficiently. “The most important aspect of the project for all our business lines is to enable future growth and drive business innovation,” adds Moreau.

Ryan Barbera, CEO of Data Canopy, adds: “We have been working in lockstep with Itiviti to understand how best to help it achieve its goals. We will employ our network of partners to determine the right solutions, and with our expertise in data centres and the cloud, we will pull it all together.”

Already all of the regulatory directives, most notably MiFID II which require specific trade reporting infrastructure are totally dependent on AWS cloud as regulatory authorities are using it as the backbone for trade reporting, tying in all regulatory technology firms and retail financial services entities from executing venues to OTC brokers with AWS infrastructure and allowing Amazon to become almost a data monopoly.

In its work with Itiviti, Ingram Micro’s Cloud IaaS Professional Services Center of Excellence is leveraging the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework. “The framework provides guidance that supports each unit within Itiviti’s organisation to understand how to update skills, adapt to existing processes, and introduce new ones to maximize the advantages of cloud computing of the services,” says John Wrona, Cloud Market Development Executive, Ingram Micro.

The cloud transformation will be rolled out in phases with the first set of applications running in the cloud due to go-live by the end of 2020.