The firm's CEO and president routinely grill Martinez and his IT team on how to save money on proposed projects--by purchasing used or lower-end equipment, for example. Martinez and his staff then get into the nitty-gritty of why a high-end Cisco router is a better fit than a low-end one. "We explain how much it will cost if we get this equipment versus if we don't and we go down," says Simon Janason, IT manager for BrokerageAmerica.
Martinez describes it this way: "We need to process 30,000 trades within milliseconds before the close of the market, and our high-volume operations require the right equipment."
But as in other organizations, IT money remains tight. BrokerageAmerica's IT budget is about $4 million, and the move to Internap cost around $50,000--not including the $10,000-per-month service, plus high-speed service fees. The firm needs about $2 million to build out its mirrored data center. The IT team recently got the green light for the project from BrokerageAmerica execs, according to Janason, and plans are now under way.
The Disaster after the Disaster
A couple of days after BrokerageAmerica moved its brokers to Internap's conference room as a temporary trading operation, the firm faced another relocation effort--where to put more than 50 traders until its damaged headquarters was renovated.
Subsea cable alternatives can provide a level of comfort for those concerned about disruptions. Realistically, they will continue to play a small, but critical role in the short term.
Maintaining existing network infrastructures often incurs huge technical debt before newer technologies are adopted over time.
Amid ongoing regional uncertainties, telecom infrastructure in the Middle East has expand to include terrestrial low-latency network infrastructure, which offers resilience and agility in navigating political complexities without relying solely on undersea networks.
