IPC and Digital Debt Capital Markets Ltd Announce a Revolutionary New Partnership Solution to Digitise the End-to-End Life Cycle of a Bond

LONDON, October 7, 2020 – IPC – a leading global provider of secure, compliant communications and networking solutions for the global financial markets is delighted to announce a strategic partnership with Digital Debt Capital Markets Ltd (“DDCM or agora”). DDCM is a UK based fintech company, providing technology to enhance, upgrade and improve communication and processes from a bond’s issuance to repayment at its term. DDCM is developing its agoraSoftware solution to digitise the end-to-end life cycle of a bond. This technology will revolutionise the experience of issuers, investment banks and downstream service providers in the international bond markets.

agoraSoftware utilises market leading Distributed Ledger Technology (R3’s Corda Enterprise) paving the way for digital securities that comply with existing regulations, enhance information sharing and eliminate costly reconciliations whilst maintaining privacy. This technology revolutionises and enhances the entire life cycle of bonds where processes have not fundamentally changed for decades. It aims to connect all major bond market participants from issuers, investment banks, issuing and paying agents and other service providers to a single golden source of critical bond information avoiding the need for the manual and duplicative input by each party to its own data silo. This information is digitally signed and made available as structured data in a permissioned and controlled manner to participants throughout the life cycle of a bond, eliminating the need for continuous reconciliation. By operating in a digital environment from inception, market participants will also benefit from the ability to embed and utilise “smart contracts” to govern and manage lifecycle functions in alignment with the natural language legal agreements, which define and govern their security operations.

“Our latest strategic partnership with agora delivers customers with direct access to their revolutionary, cutting-edge software which will be delivered via IPC’s world-class infrastructure,” says Robert Coole, Vice President Cloud Technologies, IPC. “By leveraging our trusted Connexus Cloud financial ecosystem, Agora’s innovative end-to-end solution is instantly accessible in our marketplace to a global community of over 110,000 users and nearly 7,000 market participants.”

Charlie Berman, co-founder and CEO of DDCM said: “We are delighted to have partnered with IPC. It has one of the largest and most secure communities of financial market participants in the bond markets and is used widely by precisely the organisations and institutions for whom the software has been designed. This relationship provides our first clients with a seamless and trusted opportunity to collaborate, use and test the agoraSoftware and is a first important step in the evolution of the agoraSmartbond.”

Tony Cleverly, Chief Technology Officer at DDCM said: “This important partnership with IPC has already allowed us to onboard clients in an effective and controlled environment. The support of IPC’s Connexus Labs has assisted us to develop, test and install our solutions for our bond market clients in a secure ‘cloud based’ environment. This meant we have been able to work with clients without the need for bespoke infrastructure and connectivity speeding up our development and testing of our bond market solutions.”

Market participants interested in speaking to IPC and Agora subject matter experts can schedule a meeting with us. We also encourage you to learn more at www.ipc.com and www.agoradcm.com /.

About IPC

IPC is a technology and service leader powering the global financial markets. We help clients anticipate change and solve problems, setting the standard with industry expertise, exceptional service and comprehensive technology. With a customer-first mentality, IPC brings together one of the largest and most diverse global financial ecosystems spanning all asset classes and market participants. As the enabler of this ecosystem, IPC empowers the community to interact, transact and react to market changes and challenges, and we collaborate with our customers to help make them secure, productive, compliant and connected. Visit ipc.com and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter (@IPC_Systems_Inc).

About Digital Debt Capital Markets Ltd

DDCM is a UK based techfin company, providing technology to enhance, upgrade and improve communication and processes from a bond’s issuance to repayment at its term. It is developing software to enable, for the first time, truly end-to-end digital support for the entire life cycle of a bond through the deployment of its agoraSoftware. This technology will enhance, upgrade and improve communication and processes from a bond’s issuance to repayment at its term. The agora software will be used by issuers, arrangers and multiple service providers to the international bond markets, from the pre-mandate stage, during execution, pricing and primary settlement and throughout the secondary life of the security until its final redemption.

Certain statements contained in this press release may be forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projection and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from any future results expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements.

 

IPC Announces Major Expansion of Connexus Cloud in Latin America

New York September 30, 2020 IPC, a leading global provider of secure, compliant communications and networking solutions for the financial markets community, today announces a major regional expansion of its Connexus Cloud platform in Latin America. IPC is now directly connected to some of the region’s largest exchanges and regulatory bodies, such as:

  • B3
  • Bolsa Mexicana de Valores (The Mexican Stock Exchange)
  • Bolsa de Santiago
  • Bolsa de Valores de Colombia
  • Bolsa de Valores de Lima
  • BYMA, Bolsas y Mercados Argentinos
  • Matba Rofex

 “IPC’s network ecosystem-as-a-service was strategically designed to address not only our clients’ technical requirements, but their regulatory and compliance needs as well,” said Jeffrey Britell, Senior Vice President, Global Network Services, IPC. “The breadth of our solutions is particularly important in regions like Latin America.”

IPC continues to expand their LATAM capital markets with a managed Network-as-a-Service model presenting market participants with adaptive and on-demand connectivity crucial to the communication needs of trading firms in the region and globally. Offering a purpose-built network, focused exclusively on the capital markets, along with global customer service support linking LATAM to the rest of the financial ecosystem. IPC recognizes the need to interconnect global financial centers for end-to-end service level consistency bringing support to trading firms throughout the LATAM region connecting on a global scale.

IPC’s Connexus Cloud is an unparalleled private, secure cloud solution for the global financial markets. By providing and integrating private and hybrid clouds, and enabling secure access to over 550 public clouds.

Connexus Cloud empowers the use of cloud for secure, guaranteed, high-performance data and voice communications. This includes optimized deliveries for blockchain, market data and transactions. The Connexus Cloud multi-cloud platform links together the global capital markets with sell-side and buy-side firms, inter-dealer brokers, liquidity venues, energy firms, trade lifecycle providers, and market-data vendors as well as clearing and settlement firms. They are interconnected in a financial cloud ecosystem of nearly 7000 capital market participants across 750 cities in over 60 countries across the globe.

With a diverse community of market participants across asset classes IPC offers an extensive buy-side ecosystem comprising pension funds, insurance companies, corporate treasuries, mutual funds, hedge funds and private equity firms. The sell-side community includes leading investment banks, brokers, dealers, inter-dealer brokers, prime of prime brokerages and regional banks. Along with a range of liquidity venues, such as traditional exchanges, ATS’s, ECNs, MTFs and dark pools. Further asset classes cover market data vendors, providers of trade lifecycle services, clearing and settlement services.

About IPC

IPC is a technology and service leader powering the global financial markets. We help clients anticipate change and solve problems, setting the standard with industry expertise, exceptional service and comprehensive technology. With a customer-first mentality, IPC brings together one of the largest and most diverse global financial ecosystems spanning all asset classes and market participants. As the enabler of this ecosystem, IPC empowers the community to interact, transact and react to market changes and challenges, and we collaborate with our customers to help make them secure, productive, compliant and connected. Visit ipc.com and follow us on Linkedin and Twitter (@IPC_Systems_Inc).

Certain statements contained in this press release may be forward-looking statements. These statements may be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “continue,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “might,” “plan,” “potential,” “predict,” “should” or “will” or similar terminology. Any forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections. Such forward looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control. Actual results may differ materially from any future results expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements.

IPC Announces Expanded Partnership with Beeks Financial Cloud

NEW YORK, September 22, 2020 – IPC, a leading global provider of secure, compliant communications and highly secure cloud solutions for the global financial markets, is proud to announce the expansion of its strategic relationship with Beeks Financial Cloud, an industry-leading provider of managed infrastructure solutions that specializes in low-latency trading environments.

The partnering of IPC and Beeks provides the financial markets with one of the industry’s foremost managed infrastructure offerings. By strengthening and expanding the strategic partnership, IPC continues to leverage a successful, proven model, with Beeks now becoming the foundational managed hosting infrastructure service provider for IPC’s Connexus Infrastructure Services, Powered by Beeks. This enhanced joint offering brings into the market an array of complex Beeks solutions, which includes infrastructure management across physical and virtual servers, firewalls and storage, combining with IPC’s award-winning Connexus Cloud product portfolio and IPC’s diverse worldwide ecosystem. Together, IPC and Beeks are delivering end-to-end market solutions that syndicate market data and trade lifecycle services together with a powerful, purpose-built trading infrastructure in key global market center data centers.

“When we combine the power of IPC’s Connexus Cloud with the Beeks private cloud platform, we jointly ensure that our customers have an end-to-end trading solution that maximizes the best parts of both organizations and delivers a cutting-edge platform,” said Bob Santella, Chief Executive Officer, IPC.

Connexus Infrastructure Services, Powered by Beeks, enables:

  • On demand computing power across multiple data centers around the world
  • Design options including private clouds that scale in size and on demand
  • Access to ultra-low latency trading environments
  • Bare metal server and virtual options to meet stringent trading needs
  • Defense in Depth (DiD) approach to security, tailored to the risk profile of each customer
  • The IPC community to leverage Beeks Analytics, the enhanced performance monitoring ability from the recent Beeks acquisition of Velocimetrics.

“Beeks and IPC are nimble organizations who pride ourselves on our abilities to service the needs of our customers with both pre-defined products as well as custom-designed bespoke solutions,” said Gordon McArthur, CEO, Beeks. “We’re looking forward to our combined capabilities and powerful trading infrastructure making a difference in the daily business operations of our customers.”

About IPC

IPC is a technology and service leader powering the global financial markets. We help clients anticipate change and solve problems, setting the standard with industry expertise, exceptional service and comprehensive technology. With a customer-first mentality, IPC brings together one of the largest and most diverse global financial ecosystems spanning all asset classes and market participants. As the enabler of this ecosystem, IPC empowers the community to interact, transact and react to market changes and challenges, and we collaborate with our customers to help make them secure, productive, compliant and connected. Visit ipc.com and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter (@IPC_Systems_Inc).

About Beeks Financial Cloud

Build. Connect. Analyse. UK-based Beeks Financial Cloud is a leading cloud computing, connectivity and analytics provider of Infrastructure as a Service (“IaaS”) for financial enterprises. With a network of eighteen international datacentres and low-latency connectivity between sites, we support global customers at scale in the leading financial centres. We aim to reduce barriers to entry and time to market for retail and institutional traders, delivering secure infrastructure and connectivity at ultra-low latencies for our clients across flexible and minimum-risk solutions. For more information, visit: www.beeksfinancialcloud.com and follow us on LinkedIn and twitter @BeeksFinCloud

Certain statements contained in this press release may be forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projection and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from any future results expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements.

IPC wins HFM’s Best Infrastructure Provider award for flagship Unigy® platform

LONDON, September 8, 2020 – IPC, a leading global provider of secure, compliant communications and networking solutions for the global financial markets, is delighted to announce that our flagship Unigy® platform has won the “Best Infrastructure Provider” award in Hedge Fund Magazine’s (HFM) European Technology Awards 2020.

“At IPC, we are always focused on creating a more efficient and productive trading environment through our unified communications solution, Unigy,” said Bob Santella, Chief Executive Officer, IPC. “We are honoured to receive further recognition for our industry-leading platform from leading hedge fund CTOs and technology leaders.”

Santella added: “As the industry continues to evolve and adapt to changes in the market, IPC continually strives to design new solutions and develop our offerings to meet the needs of global financial market participants.”

Unigy has consistently been recognized globally as the industry’s leading trading communications platform over the years. With more than 110,000 users, it is a widely adopted, secure, compliant, end-to-end solution that is purpose-built to address the specific needs of the global regulated financial markets community. Unigy has experienced robust growth in installations over the past year and seamlessly interoperates with IPC’s global financial cloud ecosystem of nearly 7,000 customer locations in more than 750 cities around the world.

With access to other industry-leading partners and providers, the unified communications platform offers financial organizations greater control, reliability, and a fully effective integrated communications solution. Unigy also offers a broad array of capabilities for the surveillance, management and maintenance of a firm’s trading communications infrastructure.

The HFM awards give recognition and celebrates IT, software vendors and service providers in the hedge fund industry that have demonstrated excellent service and innovative product development over the last year. The award was formally announced at a virtual awards ceremony for senior technology professionals within European hedge funds on September 3, 2020 as part of the virtual HFM European Technology Forum.

Market participants interested in speaking to IPC’s subject matter experts can schedule a meeting with our teams here.

About IPC

IPC is a technology and service leader powering the global financial markets. We help clients anticipate change and solve problems, setting the standard with industry expertise, exceptional service and comprehensive technology. With a customer-first mentality, IPC brings together one of the largest and most diverse global financial ecosystems spanning all asset classes and market participants. As the enabler of this ecosystem, IPC empowers the community to interact, transact and react to market changes and challenges, and we collaborate with our customers to help make them secure, productive, compliant and connected. Visit ipc.com and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter (@IPC_Systems_Inc).

Certain statements contained in this press release may be forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projection and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from any future results expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements.

 

 

IPC and GreenKey Technologies Launch Dictation as a Service

NEW YORK AND LONDON – September 3, 2020 – IPC, a leading global provider of secure, compliant communications and networking solutions for the global financial markets, announced today the launch of a new, managed voice trading dictation solution: Dictation as a Service. Dictation as a Service brings together GreenKey Technologies’ industry-leading cloud-based speech recognition (automatic speech recognition) and natural language processing (NLP) engine with IPC’s unparalleled Connexus Cloud financial ecosystem. The service enables financial traders to “dictate” trade jargon via a dedicated IPC private wire, and consume the output transcribed in real-time via GreenKey’s and IPC’s co-developed award-winning Blotter visualization application.

Utilizing the Blotter application, Dictation as a Service provides a powerful, industry-first end-user solution for converting unstructured voice trade data into a searchable, exportable structured data format in real-time. Dictation as a Service provides a simplified way to integrate NLP while Connexus Cloud provides the infrastructure to scale.

Members of IPC’s financial ecosystem of nearly 7,000 firms and 200,000 traders can leverage Dictation as a Service for:

  • Driving efficiencies in voice trading workflows
  • API integration to premier chat services
  • Creating automated text records of voice trades
  • Providing a trader’s consolidated daily tape
  • Searching through structured voice data to reconstruct trades
  • Supporting internal and external regulatory compliance requirements

“Timely communication is critical for traders,” said Bob Santella, Chief Executive Officer, IPC. “The combined capabilities of IPC and GreenKey empower traders to take advantage of state-of-the-art speech recognition technologies to create workflow efficiencies.”

“Our collaboration with IPC continues to provide traders with the necessary tools for success,” said Anthony Tassone, Chief Executive Officer, GreenKey Technologies. “Much like Blotter, this industry-first solution will enhance trader productivity by providing unparalleled NLP capabilities.”

IPC’s Dictation as a Service is platform-independent, and supports IPC’s award-winning Unigy™ solution, third-party trading communications systems, and PBX users.

About IPC

IPC is a technology and service leader powering the global financial markets. We help clients anticipate change and solve problems, setting the standard with industry expertise, exceptional service and comprehensive technology. With a customer-first mentality, IPC brings together one of the largest and most diverse global financial ecosystems spanning all asset classes and market participants. As the enabler of this ecosystem, IPC empowers the community to interact, transact and react to market changes and challenges, and we collaborate with our customers to make them secure, productive, compliant and connected. Learn more at ipc.com.

 

About GreenKey Technologies

GreenKey Technologies (GK) is the creator of a patented speech recognition (ASR) and natural language processing (NLP) platform that recognizes complex jargon across real-time audio and text sources and transforms them into actionable insights. GK helps financial market and emergency services professionals automate complex workflows. For more information, please visit www.greenkeytech.com.

Certain statements contained in this press release may be forward-looking statements. These statements may be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “continue,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “might,” “plan,” “potential,” “predict,” “should” or “will” or similar terminology. Any forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections. Such forward looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control. Actual results may differ materially from any future results expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements.

IPC Launches Connexus Infrastructure Services at HKEX Colocation Facility

Hong Kong – September 3, 2020 – IPC, a leading global provider of secure, compliant communications and networking solutions for the financial markets community, today announced that it is introducing Connexus Infrastructure Services (CIS), its industry-leading Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) solution, at the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEX) colocation facility.

CIS provides a turnkey environment that enables market participants to quickly set-up trading infrastructure without the cost and complexity associated with creating a physical trading environment of their own. IPC is offering dedicated bare metal servers hosted in its racks within the HKEX state-of-the-art data center. The service will give customers the opportunity to use existing trading models, or test new models, directly with HKEX, whilst benefitting from significantly reduced lead times.

The services range from fractional cabinet colocation to complete infrastructure management including server, firewall and storage administration. These services are available in private or hybrid IaaS models coupled with managed connectivity that leverages IPC’s Connexus Cloud connectivity to access and manage the environment. Customers can also utilize the HKEX colocation infrastructure as a regional trading hub to reach other APAC and global exchange colocation sites, using the IPC Connexus portfolio.

“We are delighted to give market participants a competitive edge with our managed infrastructure solutions, offering colocation with Hong Kong Exchanges combined with varying levels of compute power, storage and security,” said Mark Curran, Vice President, Asia-Pacific Network Operations, IPC. “As a result, customers can benefit from faster, more flexible market access and cost-effective solutions that deliver the processing power and low latency connectivity needed to effectively trade the markets.”

This announcement coincides with the HKEX announcement of their latest MSCI index futures contracts that further expand their derivatives product suite, and continues to enhance the partnership between the two companies that anchors their long-term commitment to the region.

CIS is part of IPC’s Connexus Cloud financial ecosystem, an unparalleled multi-cloud platform for the global financial markets, an ecosystem that interconnects nearly 7,000 diverse capital market participants across 750 cities in over 60 countries.

About IPC

IPC is a technology and service leader that powers financial markets globally. We help clients anticipate change and solve problems, setting the standard with industry expertise, exceptional service and comprehensive technology. With customers first and always, we collaborate with each to understand their individual needs to help make them secure, productive and compliant within our connected community. Through service excellence, long-developed expertise and a focus on innovation and community, we provide agile and efficient ways for our customers to accelerate their ability to adapt to the ever–changing requirements for advanced data networks, compliance and collaboration with all counter-parties across the financial markets. www.ipc.com

Certain statements contained in this press release may be forward-looking statements. These statements may be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “continue,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “might,” “plan,” “potential,” “predict,” “should” or “will” or similar terminology. Any forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections. Such forward looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control. Actual results may differ materially from any future results expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements.

Vela and IPC Expand Market Data Partnership

London and New York – August 10, 2020 Vela, a leading independent provider of trading and market access technology for global multi-asset electronic trading, today announced the expansion of its strategic partnership with IPC, a leading global provider of secure, compliant communications and networking solutions for the global financial markets.

The partnership will provide IPC customers with access to Vela’s award-winning market data solution, SuperFeed, via Connexus Cloud, IPC’s flagship financial ecosystem that interconnects more than 6,600 capital market participants across the globe. It will also enable IPC customers, utilizing Connexus Labs, to access an on-demand market data solution to support trading application testing along with third-party product evaluations.

Vela’s SuperFeed is a fully-managed, low-latency market data feed that delivers high-quality, normalized real-time data via a single source with industry-leading levels of performance, availability, and reliability. Offering an exceptional blend of fast delivery and a scalable solution, SuperFeed is designed to simplify and speed up clients’ access to data. The feed provides coverage to over 150 markets and data sources including all major North American and European exchanges and a growing number of Asia-Pacific venues. Vela continues to make significant strategic investment in SuperFeed coverage to expand the range of data types available, beyond real time and delayed, to include end-of-day and historical data solutions offering more flexibility to clients. Vela’s vendor bridge technology eliminates the costs and overheads associated with changing feed providers, enabling a more seamless and rapid migration.

IPC’s award-winning Connexus Cloud platform is an unparalleled multi-cloud platform for the global financial markets, an ecosystem that interconnects more than 6,600 diverse capital market participants across 750 cities in over 60 countries. The world’s top financial institutions rely on Connexus Cloud for trade execution, order routing, market data delivery, clearing, settlement and accessing trade lifecycle services. IPC’s Connexus Labs is a worldwide hosted infrastructure platform that provides testing and evaluation facilitates for fintech firms and innovators to assess how their products, services and applications can be integrated with the IPC product portfolio.

Ollie Cadman, Chief Product Officer at Vela, commented, “We are delighted to expand our partnership and have the strength of IPC as part of our ecosystem connecting SuperFeed to the global financial markets community. Now more than ever, firms are looking to trusted providers and private and public cloud environments to support the growing demand for access to global data sets for business processes such as automation, artificial intelligence and analytics.” He continued, “With IPC’s Connexus Cloud and Connexus Labs, financial institutions can leverage the power of the cloud for market data to support their electronic trading requirements. This partnership is an exciting step forward in our ongoing strategy to expand access to our services through public and private cloud providers.”

Mike Smith, Director of Global Exchange Relations Management at IPC, said, “We are pleased to have Vela’s SuperFeed as a part of our market data content offering, as we continue to provide our secure and compliant managed solutions to cater for all our customers’ unique trading requirements. The SuperFeed market data service complements our Connexus Cloud offering by providing access to multiple market data feeds from a single place, and delivers the additional benefits of a professionally managed infrastructure and support model.”

About Vela

Vela is a leading independent provider of trading and market access technology for global multi-asset electronic trading. Our software enables clients to rapidly access global liquidity, markets, and data sources for superior execution. We help firms successfully differentiate and innovate in an ever-changing, increasingly regulated and fiercely-competitive landscape, while also reducing total cost of ownership.

Vela’s ticker plant, execution gateways, trading platform, and risk and analytics software deliver a unique, ultra-low latency technology stack to simplify and streamline electronic trading. We leverage the latest innovations in technology to deliver cutting-edge performance, features and reliability. Our modular stack provides access to a comprehensive set of trading data and risk APIs and can be delivered “as-a-Service” from multiple co-location data centers globally.

With access to more than 250 venues, Vela provides global coverage across all major asset classes. Clients are supported by an award-winning team of technical and business experts available 24×7 from our multiple offices in the US, Europe, and Asia. Vela’s clients include traders, market makers, brokers, banks, investment firms, exchanges, and other market participants.

Visit us at www.tradevela.com. Follow us on Twitter @TradeVela.

About IPC

IPC is a technology and service leader powering the global financial markets. We help clients anticipate change and solve problems, setting the standard with industry expertise, exceptional service and comprehensive technology. With a customer-first mentality, IPC brings together one of the largest and most diverse global financial ecosystems spanning all asset classes and market participants. As the enabler of this ecosystem, IPC empowers the community to interact, transact and react to market changes and challenges, and we collaborate with our customers to help make them secure, productive, compliant and connected. Visit ipc.com and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter (@IPC_Systems_Inc).

Lessons from the Covid-19 Outbreak: What History Tells Us

First Published: Traders Magazine / July 2020

Companies everywhere are beginning to pause and take stock of how they have handled the COVID-19 pandemic. It only makes sense to reflect on what has been an exceptional and intense time in order to draw lessons and plan for the future. IPC is no different. For us, the biggest lesson from the past few months is one that has echoes in military history.

We play a vital infrastructural role, one that effectively provides the nervous system for financial markets. So, we immediately knew that how we responded would be decisive not only for our own firm but also for so many others. The relationship we have with our clients is what makes military history so analogous. They depend on us, in the same way that one part of a military operation depends on another.

Take, for example, one of the more dramatic moments from World War II in the Pacific theater. In December 1944, the United States Navy’s Task Force 38 was under the command of Admiral William “Bull” Halsey. The navy’s task force operations were based on aircraft carriers, from which attacks could be launched. Halsey had been told that a weak tropical storm was approaching. But the information he received – about the location, direction and intensity of the storm – was inaccurate. On December 17th, Halsey unwittingly sailed the Third Fleet into the center of Typhoon Cobra. By the time the storm had ended the Third Feet had lost three ships, 146 aircraft and almost 800 sailors. Another 30 ships suffered major damaged. Task Force 38 was as severely battered as if it had been in a major battle.

Flash forward 75 years and it’s December 2019. A mysterious illness is first reported in Wuhan, China, while the Dow Jones is scaling all-time highs. The next month, the World Health Organization issued guidance comparing the outbreak to SARS and other respiratory pathogens. The Dow is still going strong. By mid-February, as the WHO convened a COVID-19 forum with more than 400 experts, the Dow was approaching 30,000.

What links these two stories together? Information. Having reliable, accurate information makes all the difference between plunging headlong into a disastrous situation or averting the worst of a crisis. In the case of COVID-19, the information was there, but few people were watching. Within a few weeks, the Dow would be below 18,600. Those firms that had the right information were able to plan and take appropriate measures. Those that did not, suffered badly.

IPC had no choice but to respond to the information immediately. It became clear straight away that we would have to execute our own Business Continuity Plan (BCP) and Work from Home (WFH) strategy at an unheard-of scale – all while supporting the global financial markets and the world’s largest trading intuitions. By the end of March, the company launched four BCP solutions into the market. In the weeks that followed, our company actually began to resemble a military operation. Gathering client feedback, managing supply chains, making enhancements and rolling out updates all had to be done clearly and precisely. We were certainly tested.

Moving forward

IPC provides solutions that help the market ensure they have access to accurate information for voice and electronic trading.  While the electronic markets continued to function, it became clear that voice became even more important for markets to communicate during the worst of the pandemic. In an uncertain global trading environment, voice provided a sense of normality. Millions of people around the world have been affected by the virus. Countries, states and local governments are now reopening. We all know that the world will not go back to how it was before. But we also have learned some significant lessons. We know the importance of acting swiftly on health information. We know that we and our clients were able to survive the most demanding operational test of our lifetimes. And we know that if the pandemic worsens again, we will be ready.

IPC Breaks Record Again in 2020 Waters Rankings with Two New Award Wins

NEW YORK, July 16, 2020 – IPC, a leading global provider of secure, compliant communications and networking solutions for the global financial markets, is delighted to announce two new award wins in WatersTechnology’s 2020 Waters Rankings:

  • Best Cloud Infrastructure Provider for IPC’s Connexus Cloud
  • Best Trading Floor Communication System Provider for IPC’s Unigy solution

The latter category has been won by IPC 15 consecutive times, breaking IPC’s own record for most wins in a single category in this prestigious awards program’s 18-year history.

“IPC is always focused on making the trading environment more efficient and productive through our unified communications solution, Unigy,” said Bob Santella, Chief Executive Officer, IPC. “To also receive recognition for our industry-leading Connexus Cloud platform is a testament to IPC’s consistent dedication in providing the highest quality data, voice and cloud solutions to our customers.”

 Unigy has been recognized globally for years as the industry’s best trading and communications platform. It is a widely adopted, secure, compliant, end-to-end solution purpose-built to address the specific needs of the global regulated financial markets community, and has experienced robust growth in installations over the past year, seamlessly interoperating with IPC’s global financial ecosystem of over 6,600 customer locations in more than 750 cities throughout the world.

Furthermore, Connexus Cloud is an unparalleled private, secure cloud solution for the global financial markets. By providing and integrating private and hybrid clouds, and enabling secure access to over 550 public clouds, Connexus Cloud empowers the use of cloud for secure, high-performance data and voice communications, which includes optimized deliveries for market data and trade lifecycle services.

“As recognized by its peers, IPC is maintaining the highest standard of achievement even amid stressed financial market conditions globally,” said Anthony Malakian, Editor-in-Chief, WatersTechnology.

The Waters Rankings are the annual readers’ choice awards of WatersTechnology, which recognize the combined leadership of technological capabilities and human expertise in various categories of financial services technology. Qualified voters participating in the Waters Rankings are from buy- and sell-side firms as well as exchanges and interdealer brokers.

About IPC

IPC is a technology and service leader powering the global financial markets. We help clients anticipate change and solve problems, setting the standard with industry expertise, exceptional service and comprehensive technology. With a customer-first mentality, IPC brings together one of the largest and most diverse global financial ecosystems spanning all asset classes and market participants. As the enabler of this ecosystem, IPC empowers the community to interact, transact and react to market changes and challenges, and we collaborate with our customers to help make them secure, productive, compliant and connected. Visit ipc.com and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter (@IPC_Systems_Inc).

Certain statements contained in this press release may be forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projection and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from any future results expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements.