Tag Archives: BSO

Cloud Platforms, News

Financial Institution’s tolerance of poor cloud connectivity is costing them 50% of revenue

Dublin, Ireland, 31st May 2022 BSO, a global pioneering infrastructure and connectivity provider, today revealed new research uncovering a “resilience paradox” suggesting that financial institutions have come to tolerate poor cloud connectivity experiences.

Nearly all IT decision makers rated their connectivity as being extremely or very resilient, yet all had experienced outages to some degree with almost half experiencing outages at least monthly. The sluggishness to move to more reliable cloud options is costing financial institutions 21%-50% of revenue on average yet only 2% of financial institutions are planning to change cloud providers in the near term. The findings are a surprising contradiction given the availability of cloud solutions on the market that guarantee 99.99% uptime and 100% data durability for object storage.

The report, Cloud connectivity and the future of financial markets, is based on a survey of 600 IT decision makers in financial service sectors including banking, trading, brokerage, financial exchanges and crypto exchanges. Businesses from across the world were surveyed including France, Germany, the UK, the US, Hong Kong, Singapore and Brazil.

Key findings include:

  • Performance: In all sectors and countries average losses for financial service firms due to poor network performance topped $67mn for the past 12 months.
  • Data security: The most pronounced impact that security breaches had on businesses was on lost or misdirected payments, with over half of businesses (52%) experiencing them, closely followed by the inability to access accounts or accounts suspended (47%) and inability to use the full, promised functionality of cloud-based applications (41%).
  • Global scale: 2 in 5 (38%) respondents said poor cloud connectivity stopped them from expanding into a new geographic market. Nearly half (48%) said it stopped them from launching a new product or service. Over 2 in 10 (22%) said it stopped them from expanding into a new sector.
  • Top considerations for selecting a new cloud connectivity provider: Quantity of cloud on-ramps (51%), technology and services that align with business needs (49%), low number of transactions needing repairs or returns (48%), the ability to exit with no risk of vendor lock-in (39%) and better choices of currencies (39%) were the top five considerations for businesses when selecting a new provider.
  • The pandemic effect: Contrary to popular belief, the pandemic was not a major stimulus of cloud investment because most businesses (99%) had already started using cloud to access applications before the pandemic.

The research also found a “north-south cloud divide” when comparing markets across several cloud performance metrics. France, UK and US firms consistently estimated considerably higher impacts from poor cloud performance when compared to their southern hemisphere counterparts, Hong Kong, Singapore and Brazil. Cumulative losses topped $442.67mn for France, UK and US firms dwarfing losses of $64.71mn from Hong Kong, Singapore, Brazil firms.

The north-south cloud divide key findings include:

  • Low latency: On average firms lost $14mn due to lost trades in the past 12 months due to the inability to achieve low-latency goals with US ($64.45mn), UK ($16.18mn) and French ($15.97mn) firms experiencing the most significant losses.
  • Scaling resources: Over $25m in revenue was lost in the last 12 months on average from the inability to effectively scale resources. The US recognised shockingly higher losses ($142.83mn) than the rest of the world and dwarfs UK firms ($15.43mn) in second place.
  • Sourcing real time market data: The inability to source real-time market data cost banks $18mn on average. US banks lost $44.72mn followed by UK banks ($14.63mn) and French banks ($12.69mn).

“The importance of cloud technologies is well-established among financial service institutions, but this is the first report of its kind to uncover the impact of poor cloud connectivity on the commercial success of businesses. The losses financial service institutions have witnessed in the last year due to poor cloud connectivity should be a wake up call to the industry.” Said Michael Ourabah, CEO of BSO. “The findings raise an important question – why are institutions hesitating to make changes to their cloud connectivity when solutions are readily available? Whatever the answer, the most successful institutions will be those that take a proactive approach to their cloud strategy.”

The report is available at https://www.bso.co/cloud-connectivity-report

Asia, News

OSL and BSO unveil strategic partnership to bolster connectivity for institutional exchange clients

Dublin, Ireland and Hong Kong – 17 May 2022 – BSO, the global pioneering infrastructure and connectivity provider, and OSL, Asia’s leading digital asset platform, today announced that BSO will become the low latency connectivity provider of choice for OSL’s institutional grade exchange.

BSO’s global low-latency network will allow institutions to connect directly to OSL’s exchange matching engines at high-speed, providing users with rapid access to the necessary infrastructure to support profitable high-frequency and algorithmic trading.

Enabled by BSO’s cloud-based data centre infrastructure, this underlying system, coupled with OSL’s high speed matching engine, will offer traders deterministic latency, resiliency and unparalleled efficiency in implementing their trading strategies.

OSL has recently launched a range of new trader and market maker incentive programmes. Backed by BSO’s direct low latency connectivity, OSL will be able to deliver these with significant TCO reductions, better security and faster time to market for partners.

Commenting on the announcement, Michael Ourabah, CEO at BSO, said: “Trading strategies are constantly evolving in line with the growth of the digital asset trading sector and our mission is to make sure connectivity is not a barrier to success for any trader in the space. That’s why we’re pleased to partner with OSL, an industry leader providing world class operations and compliance, efficient settlements, and a competitive value proposition.”

OSL’s Head of Exchange, Andrew Walton said: “In line with OSL’s vision to lead the regulated, institutional evolution of the digital asset marketplace, we are pleased to welcome BSO as an approved network service provider. BSO’s technology will enable fast and secure access to our OSL digital asset marketplace, and comes at the perfect time to complement our recent global expansion. We look forward to extending these capabilities, which are used extensively in the traditional capital markets space, to our institutional clients.”

About OSL and BC Technology Group

Backed by Asia’s leading public fintech and digital asset company, BC Technology Group (stock code: HK 863), OSL is the region’s most comprehensive licensed digital asset platform.

OSL is the world’s first and only insured and SFC-licensed digital asset platform, providing prime brokerage, custody, exchange and SaaS services for institutional clients and professional investors.

The company offers OTC, iRFQ and electronic trading services giving traders access to the world’s deepest liquidity pools, as well as secure and insured hot and cold wallets to ensure the safekeeping of digital assets with timely transaction settlement.

BC Group and the OSL platform are enabling institutional adoption of the digital asset class, setting the global standard for performance, security and compliance.

For more information: bc.group and osl.com.

Cryptocurrency, News

BSO enhances Crypto Connect offering for US exchanges

The fully operational Crypto Connect product has undergone enhancements to meet increasing market demand for low latency and available bandwidth.

Dublin, Ireland, 29th March 2022 – BSO, a global pioneering infrastructure and connectivity provider, has today announced enhancements that have been made to its Crypto Connect product to meet increasing demand in US-based crypto exchanges.

Crypto Connect offers both low latency cloud connectivity and cloud-to-cloud connectivity. With dedicated bandwidth, no reliance on routing hardware and private and secure trading routes – it’s the most comprehensive low latency crypto trading solution in the market.

“Cryptocurrencies have established their place in the investment market after a decade of steady growth. With the emergence of specialised crypto trading firms and a growing interest amongst institutional investors, the need for low latency connectivity solutions in crypto is more crucial than ever,” said Michael Ourabah, CEO at BSO.

Institutional firms that engage in cryptocurrency trading cannot use the public internet due to security threats and unreliable performance issues. As crypto exchanges are hosted in the cloud and in data centres, an effective solution needs to support data centre-to-data centre connectivity, data centre-to-cloud connectivity, and cloud to cloud connectivity, all while keeping low latencies top of mind.

“Over the last couple of months, we have witnessed more customer demand for low latency connectivity to US-based and global crypto exchanges, and BSO’s market leading technology and service continues to adapt and grow to meet market demand,” said Steve McConnell, Head of Americas at BSO.