Contributors: Evgeny Smirnov, Head of Products and Standards at CJC.

What & Why Managed Services?

In an increasingly complex landscape and the advent of the cloud, financial institutions are relying on multiple system vendors to power their market data infrastructure and maintain competitive business operations. Setting up, troubleshooting, maintaining, and optimising market data performance with limited in-house resources and expertise is a near-impossible task.

Instead of dedicating in-house resources to receive less-than-optimal results, many institutions outsource to reputable managed services providers (MSPs). Take CJC’s Operations-as-a-Service (OaaS) as an example; consumers receive the entire breadth and depth of CJC’s technical expertise, which frees up in-house resources for more strategic work, and potentially lowers the total cost of ownership.

Managed Services - 5 Things To Look Out For

While there will be other variables to consider, many will agree that 5 things financial firms should look for in a managed services provider include, but are not limited to:

1. Rapid Response and Resolution.
2. Service Availability.
3. Security Testing and Monitoring.
4. Technical Expertise.
5. Consistent Account Management.

Rapid Response and Resolution

Voted the most important in a recent survey, a Managed Service provider needs to be agile enough to quickly respond to your changing needs and problems, without being diverted to a call centre. After all, if you suffer an outage like the Australia Stock Exchange or Rogers’s outage, you will want a resolution as fast as possible. Look for a guaranteed response time.

Service Availability

Do you work 24 hours a day? Your market data's global network and IT security do, and so must your managed services provider. A reliable MSP provider must be available 24 hours a day, 7-days a week, 365 days a year. Your organisation cannot risk prolonged outages as seen elsewhere, especially while operational resilience and downtime duration remains in the limelight, as previously discussed.

Security Testing & Monitoring

In addition to being agile and ‘always-on’, reliable managed services providers must also proactively safeguard managed systems from online threats and cyber-criminals. As Robinhood discovered, insufficient security and monitoring can have disastrous consequences.

CJC utilises industry best practices and multi-layered security techniques. The company adopts a zero-trust security approach and is ISO 27001 certified.

Technical Expertise

More than just “eyes-on-glass”, a decent managed services provider must have the depth and breadth of technical expertise to meet your business needs. However, a value-adding managed services provider will also possess the foresight to guide your firm as new technologies emerge, like the cloud and how to leverage its capabilities, for example, multicast in the cloud. 

Consistent Account Management

Your market data IT system is complex and mission-critical. Standalone monthly or quarterly reports are simply inadequate. Regular and consistent feedback is a vital opportunity for all parties to stay aligned and formulate plans to optimise performance.

On top of standard monthly reports and a multi-touchpoint support model, CJC hosts a weekly meeting with OaaS clients to review, assess, prioritise, resource, and schedule upcoming change windows.

Should You Consider Cloud Capabilities?

Cloud-based infrastructure has indisputably caused ripples throughout the financial sector, and institutions are increasingly embracing the cloud to leverage well-documented benefits. Whilst industry leaders like Deutsche Bank, CME Group, and TP ICAP’s Parameta Solutions have recently adopted the cloud, new cloud-native entrants like Monzo have already acquired massive gains as early adopters.

Despite the potential gains, cloud adoption is not without its concerns and migration barriers will vary between individual firms. Managing Director of Google Cloud for Financial Services, Zac Maufe, points out that barriers include legacy system complexities, trust and skill gaps, regulatory uncertainties, and fragmentation of compliance requirements.

Barriers that CJC, an industry-recognised specialist market data consultancy, can help mitigate.