By Leo Koutikas, VP, Unigy and Voice Engineering, IPC Systems
In the current financial services landscape, driving operational efficiency and ensuring a durable competitive advantage has never been more pressing. As markets become increasingly complex and dynamic, financial institutions and firms face a critical imperative: how to adapt and react quickly to continuing technological advances in service delivery and customer value.
To excel in today’s fiercely competitive environment, institutions must embrace innovation and adaptability. Traditional methods of technology development and legacy systems no longer suffice to meet the rapid demands of modern markets. For many institutions, legacy systems represent a significant barrier to agility and efficiency, characterized by outdated infrastructure, fragmented business lines, data silos, and cumbersome workflows that stifle productivity and hinder the ability to respond promptly to market changes and customer demands.
Financial markets technology innovator IPC approaches today’s complex technology challenges differently, and from a starting point that considers how new technologies might co-exist, rather than replace, existing architectures and infrastructures. Specifically, IPC’s DevOps API-led approach looks at how monolithic applications can be converted into sets of containerized microservices and aligned with technology stacks to support much faster and easier software and API development.
Meeting Market Demands with Agility
At the forefront of enhanced trading communications and connectivity for more than 50 years, IPC understands better than most the need for continuous technological evolution in fast-changing financial markets. This understanding is core to its “API First” philosophy and approach to product development, built on open platform enablement and new technology paradigms that drive continuing service efficiencies.
This modern Application Development Platform approach empowers institutions and firms to deploy trading tools and solutions in a much more agile and flexible way, enabling them to navigate the path to new product delivery, or around market challenges, with precision and efficiency, and to adapt and thrive in an ever-evolving financial landscape.
Unlocking Value: The Bank Hapoalim BM Case Study
In the case of Bank Hapoalim BM, the business impact of modern Application Development Platforms is evident. Faced with the challenge of enhancing its customer relationship management capabilities and supporting increased trading communications requirements, Bank Hapoalim sought a cost-effective solution that would enable seamless integration with its trading CRM application.
Leveraging IPC Systems’ Blue Wave API technology, and in collaboration with Magalcom, Bank Hapoalim achieved immediate and significant results. A tailored solution empowered Bank Hapoalim to consolidate voice trading communications seamlessly within its CRM platform, providing a comprehensive view of trading activity and optimizing revenue generation.
The Potential of IPC’s Blue Wave
IPC’s Blue Wave API solution epitomizes the promise of modern technology in the financial sector. Built on IPC Agility, a Kubernetes-managed platform, Blue Wave enables software applications to harness the benefits of Kubernetes – think of this as a way of steering a ship full of containers – including horizontal scalability, improved resiliency, and rapid upgrade/rollback capabilities.
IPC Agility is a Transformational Application Platform that enables the power of containerized or virtualized applications (APIs) and tools to be deployed in parallel with the market-leading Unigy platform, reducing development and deployment times, ensuring trading system stability and essentially giving customers more service delivery flexibility with reduced trading system risk. Blue Wave APIs play a pivotal role in enhancing end-user experiences, providing robust user and system management for many Connexus Unigy customers. Moreover, customers and partners use Blue Wave APIs to develop unique applications to support a comprehensive range of available data, management, and CTI APIs, contributing to the development of innovative and unique end-to-end workflows.
Conclusion
In an era defined by rapid change and relentless competition, financial institutions and firms must embrace innovation to stay ahead of the curve. Strategic partnerships that offer efficient and effective access to cutting-edge technology enable firms to unlock new business opportunities, maintain a competitive edge and drive business growth in an increasingly complex, dynamic, and challenging marketplace.
With the right service provider – and partner – the opportunities for continuing technology innovation and transformation are limitless. By leveraging specialist knowledge and harnessing ‘best-in-class’ technologies, financial markets participants can develop and enhance their own trading capabilities more effectively, enabling them to accelerate time to market, deliver unparalleled services, and foster business growth.
