Customer Profile
Our client operates in the financial services sector as a fully-licensed, independent investment advisory and asset management company. They are based in Zurich, Switzerland and are a team of highly skilled Swiss bankers, financial analysts and multi-disciplinary professionals. The company offers an integrated, client-focused approach to the management and protection of global financial assets. Their international team consists of experts in an impressively diverse range of competencies. They deliver optimum levels of service and execution, suitable for High Net Worth Individuals, as well as highly diverse family portfolio scenarios. The necessity to operate and access their systems globally led them to launch their own portfolio management software in the cloud.
To answer the exact needs of their small company, the upper management, and IT team chose CloudSigma to provide them with a flexible server solution on the one hand and to save them infrastructure costs on the other hand. As a result, today the company can offer a highly-accessible and flexible service to their end clients and support them in the best way.
“We were able to run a working server with zero time and implement our infrastructure one-to-one in the cloud.”CTO at client company
The Challenge
As an independent investment advisory, our client wanted to develop its own portfolio management system software that runs on Microsoft’s SQL Server Standard database. A small team is using the platform on a daily basis with professionals located in Switzerland and Israel. All of the collected data is confidential bank data, hence it should be securely kept in Switzerland.
This posed a challenge for the company when choosing an infrastructure solution. There were two key criteria – employees must have access to the system from both locations and from their home offices. At the same time, the data should be kept in Switzerland for security and legislative reasons. On top of that, for a small company like our client, it would have been very costly and inefficient for them to buy and maintain their own infrastructure.
“Buying servers, doing regular maintenances and upgrades, or assuring a stable network connection 24/7 to connect to these servers – these were real challenges for us and the main reason to go to the cloud.”
All these challenges were out of the scope of their core business and expertise, which led them to the decision to deploy their solution with a cloud-based approach.
“We always receive very good and prompt service from the team of CloudSigma.”CTO at client company
The Solution
They searched for a cloud partner who will provide the same level of reliability as they provide to their clients. The company considered and compared several cloud providers. They found that the CloudSigma platform corresponds to the highest data security standards and assures high availability. According to their CTO, the CloudSigma cloud solution proved to be the best choice and covered the most critical aspects.
“We chose CloudSigma for several reasons. The main is that the location of the storage is in Switzerland. Second, we were granted a longer free period of testing. Last but not least, we received very good support from your side in the launch phase of our software product.”
CloudSigma ensures that each cloud location falls under the local jurisdiction only. For example, Switzerland for the Zurich cloud, Germany for the Frankfurt cloud, etc. This unique local/global approach is ideal for financial services companies.
Our client also found the support and the testing possibilities at the beginning very helpful to estimate the performance of the cloud and to deploy their product successfully. The migration to the cloud was quick and effortless and they managed to integrate their project one-to-one with no need to undertake any individual adjustments. Two months of project preparation and two months of testing in the cloud resulted in a running, ready-to-use production deployment in the cloud. During the migration, the company fully relied on CloudSigma’s 24/7 knowledgeable technical support.
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“We are very happy that we received a free period of testing. At that time no other company would let us test for free for that long. So we tried it, we installed our software, we got very good support from your technical team. Everything looked nice and worked smoothly from the very beginning.”
Overall, the asset management company was very happy with the service level that CloudSigma provided. They needed some time until the infrastructure was tuned to fit the company needs most efficiently. As a result of the partnership with Cloudsigma, they could enjoy increased cloud capacity and flexibility. And they were able to relax running their software in the cloud as their needs change over time.
Last but not least, our client’s team members were very satisfied with the level of engagement. As well as having a dedicated contact at CloudSigma, who kept them updated and was available when issues occurred.
“Our account manager has always been very helpful in understanding our needs and finding the best possible solution.”
The Impact
After a few years with CloudSigma, the Swiss-based advisory can reflect on the impact it has had on their business. They highlight stable networking as a key benefit.
“With any cloud provider you can buy more CPU or RAM to increase the server performance, but it is the stable connection and access to the server which is one of the most important things for us today. This is where CloudSigma has proven to be a very reliable partner.”
Focus on their core business and strengths has been another key strategic benefit.
“If you are looking for an easy solution without buying servers and building the complete infrastructure in your offices, CloudSigma will certainly offer you a very simple, reliable and efficient solution.”CTO at client company
“We felt the positive time saving effects on our team within a very short period after implementing the project. Today I can say that the strategic decision we took to run our software in the cloud has accelerated our time to market with our clients in a significant way. In addition, it has saved 20% of our team’s time, which we then applied to other important tasks, such as improving our company’s work processes.”
In short, whilst the cloud has offered them cost savings, the most significant benefits have been strategic ones. To benefit their business as a whole – this value far outweighs simplе cost savings.
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