Grid Computing Consulting

Who? What?

A Global Investment Bank had decided on a grid-based solution as part of their overarching strategy and engaged ThoughtWorks to help them confirm requirements and select a vendor. We continued working together, migrating and customising core applications for Equities and Credits to the grid.

Why?

IT Leadership had set ambitious goals on cost savings, reducing duplication and improving performance and stability. They called in ThoughtWorks to help them select the right vendor, and kept us there to drive excellence and efficiency in the transfer to the grid.

How?

Once the vendor selection process was complete, ThoughtWorks continued to work with the client team to migrate key applications to the grid. The first areas to be migrated were Equities and Credit, using Equities as a prove-out case to help build up stakeholder confidence. The Equities application was a piece of custom-built cluster technology which handles complex jobs with dependancies. Release 1 was issued in 4 months, fully functional and meeting all project requirements.

The joint 'grid team' worked constantly with users and developers of the original applications to understand how they are used and how they should translate onto the grid. Release 2 focused on continuing improvements for the Users and working on longer term solutions to issues tactically resolved. This release, delivered 8 months later, is a pristine application, the improvements to stablity rendering much of the back-up functionality defunct.

The grid is now a standard component of the bank's infrastructure and supports its trading platforms and pricing applications. It is completely integrated and has made significant in-roads on issues of consistency, reliability and compliance for the client.

The Results?

• The power and infrastructure is now available for the bank to support innovation and long-term business growth, a highly scalable solution
• Grid now a standard component in the bank architecture
• The potential delivered for on-demand prices for non-booked trades
• Additional improvements in applications made during migration
• The client team are now able to focus on consistency of software
• Standardized approach, leveraging best practices across the bank, enabling improved time to market
• No bandwidth restrictions or time surges on system.

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