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Proximity Cloud is the only fully configured, pre-installed physical trading environment that has been fully optimised for low latency trading conditions.
Beeks Group introduces the ability to run a private cloud infrastructure on premise, to deliver a truly hybrid experience.
Beeks Group, a Beeks Financial Cloud plc company (LSE: BKS) launched Proximity Cloud in August 2021, a fully-managed and configurable compute, storage and analytics rack built with industry-leading low latency hardware that allow capital markets and financial services customers to run compute, storage and analytics on-premise. Utilising high precision timing tools, and supporting Unicast and Multicast datasets, the platform can be deployed on customer sites anywhere in the world.
Proximity Cloud has been uniquely developed for capital markets and financial services. While managed cloud service providers offer generic cloud computing solutions, Proximity Cloud has grown out of the knowledge, expertise and experience of exclusively supporting financial trading companies.
“We’ve got a long and unique history of delivering on-demand compute in financial services,” says Gordon McArthur, CEO at Beeks Group. “We know the pain points our customers encounter, and Proximity Cloud is our most comprehensive offering to date. We aim to eliminate some of the risks and a lot of the costs that come with in-house infrastructure solutions and to make it a lot easier to get value to the business.”
Crucially, the system has the ability to be deployed in a client site which means the data remains within the client environment resulting in enhanced security and reduced data sovereignty issues.
Proximity Cloud has been purposely designed for connectivity-rich environments and comes with physical and virtual compute capacity built in and racks can be combined to scale capacity up and down as required.
Built with security and compliance at the forefront, Proximity Cloud comprises a high-performance, private environment while seamlessly connecting to capital market counterparties, as well as public cloud service providers.
Proximity Cloud helps solve everything from security risk to opportunity blocks, performance analytics and local supply chain issues.
“Up until now Beeks has provided a private cloud product with a level of shared network infrastructure hosted in the Beeks’ domain,” explains McArthur. “Although we were having great meetings with banks and the bigger financial institutions who love our message and our agility, we kept bumping our head against the issue of internal controls using shared networks.
“The shared infrastructure platform was causing problems with security, data access and data sovereignty,” says McArthur. “These may not be so significant in the generic cloud, but they are show-stoppers in the financial sector.”
“Replacing shared infrastructure through a dedicated, client-owned environment was key.”
Its single-user interface has been designed to help customers manage their own capacity from end to end with ease, scaling up and down, or deploying and removing services is effortless.
The platform can be hosted by Beeks within any of the world’s leading financial data centres and take advantage of Beeks 24/7 NOC support or it can be delivered to the customers on premise data centre or to any third party location of their choice.
Commenting on the flexibility of Proximity Cloud Head of Sales for Beeks Group Alan Samuel says: “Our other products to date have been prescriptive in terms of location. Our customers have had to engage with Beeks Cloud within our own footprint in our global locations.
“Proximity Cloud enables us to deliver the product in any location. Our customers don’t have to locate it in LD4 or NY4. They can have it in their own building in London, New York, Singapore or literally anywhere in the world they require it to be.”
Proximity Cloud is available to purchase using Beeks unique OPEX-based pricing model. Beeks’s monthly subscription model means that organisations can get up and running with a comparatively low OPEX spend, rather than the huge CAPEX investment associated with traditional solution development and implementation contracts.
“We’ve always known how to get the technology off the ground cost effectively,” comments McArthur. “Proximity Cloud is the latest addition offering immediate value for money.”
Over the past ten years, Beeks Group has delivered infrastructure solutions optimised specifically for capital markets and financial services that allow customers to consume compute, storage and analytics through managed hosting, public cloud services or on premise and Proximity Cloud makes it easier to quickly deploy on premise.
Emphasising the maturity of the product’s core functionality, McArthur says: “All the components within Proximity Cloud are tried and tested over the last decade. We are one of the only firms in the world with dedicated expertise in building, networking and automating private virtual machines and analytics for the financial markets.
“In that sense Proximity Cloud is not a new product. It’s an iteration of all the components we’ve spent the last ten years building and automating, all brought together in a plug-and-play package.
“What is new is the software layer that brings all the components together and enables point and click management through a brand-new user interface”.
Speak to the team to find out more or view details here for more information.
