A monolithic registered investment advisor (RIA) platform transformed into microservices helps a leading brokerage firm achieve enhanced operations and user experience.
Client
A leading U.S. brokerage firm with $1+ trillion in assets and serving 6,000+ RIAs
Goal
Resolve online platform accessibility, functionality and timeliness issues
Tools and Technologies
Angular 9, Jenkins, Pivotal Cloud Foundry, Oracle, Kubernetes, Spring, Docker
Business Challenge
Client’s existing brokerage platform supporting over 6,000 Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs) and containing information about assets valued at more than $1 trillion had accessibility issues. The high cost of owning and maintaining outdated technologies and time-to-market for new features were adding to the business challenges.
Solution
Iris transitioned the client’s monolith applications to microservices to transform the RIA platform. An open-source, cloud technical stack was leveraged to develop a single-page, micro-UI-based application. BFF (Backend for Frontend) design was applied, and Angular 9 was used to achieve superior compatibility on mobile devices.
Widgets were introduced to enable seamless transitions within third-party applications. Consolidated user views were created to track assets and their performance for a unified experience for the RIAs.
Outcomes
The RIA platform transformation enabled the client to achieve significant functional enhancements, including:
- Fully functional mobile views
- 100+ integrated third-party applications
- Instant and seamless access to client accounts
- Downtime for hot deployments of fixes brought to zero
- Technical debt decreased by 45%
- Release timelines shortened by 80%
- Issue resolution time reduced by 90%
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SFTR solution strengthened market leadership
Risk & Compliance
Securities financing transactions regulation compliance made easy
A global market data and trading services provider strengthens its EU market leadership with a regulatory solution by supporting a throughput of 6 million transactions per hour.
Client
A leading provider of market data and trading services
Goal
Support complex regulatory reporting with automated solution
Tools and Technologies
Java, Spring Boot, Apache Camel, CXF, Drools BRE, Oracle, JBoss Fuse, Elasticsearch, Git, Bitbucket, Sonar, Maven
Business Challenge
The client offers an automated, integrated solution to its clients in the European Union (EU) for complying with the Securities Financing Transactions Regulation (SFTR).
Effective in recent years, SFTR requires timely and detailed reporting based on multitudes of data, systems, collateral, and lifecycle events. The voluminous data is captured from hundreds of millions of daily transactions made to multiple trade repositories registered by the European Securities and Markets Authorities (ESMA).
Non-compliance at any stage is risky, potentially very costly, for all trade counterparties, i.e., broker-dealers, banks, asset managers, institutional investors.
Solution
Experienced in diverse technologies, big data, and capital markets, team Iris developed a streamlined, end-to-end data reporting platform with complex trade matching and monitoring systems. Improving speed, accuracy, and flexibility, the new architecture supports high trade concurrency and acceptance rates with parallel processing of millions of transactions.
The delivered solution also enabled optimal load balancing and matched the reconciliation at the trade repository. Built with microservices to accommodate future scalability, standardization, data quality, and security requirements, the system implemented functional enhancements. A Unique Transaction Identifier (UTI) subsystem was also developed for sharing and matching counterparty transactions, enabling plug-and-play setup for new repositories, and supporting any changes in outbound or inbound data report formats required by ESMA or clients. Improved dashboards and search pages helped the end-users in better configuration and tracking of their transactions.
Outcomes
The nimble delivery and successful roll-out of the new SFTR platform delivered the desired strategic competitive advantage to the client for maintaining its EU market leader position. The consolidated solution also helped in:
- Generating additional revenue from extending the new reporting services to 17 firms
- Beating the industry benchmark (~91%), achieving a higher transaction acceptance rate (~97%), and match reconciliation at the trade repository
- Supporting a high throughput of 6 million transactions per hour which is scalable up to 10 million
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Cloud transformation increases business agility
Existing applications supporting the business were built on monolith architecture with high technical debt. Iris transformed monolith applications that were more than 15 years old into microservices with automated integration and cloud deployment to deliver faster MVPs.
Client
A non-profit global organization responsible for developing and maintaining standards, including barcodes with over 115 local member organizations and over 2 million user companies
Goals
To deliver MVPs in shorter cycles, reduce Mean Time for Ticket Resolution (MTTR), and lower the total cost of ownership
Tools and Technologies
C#/.NET Core, Python/DJango, NodeJS/Express, Azure WAF, Azure APIM, App Services, Azure Kubernetes Service, Azure Monitor, and Application Insights
Business Challenge
The client had a suite of legacy applications to generate barcodes that are scanned globally over 6 million times a day.
These applications were built on monolithic architectures using heavy-weight application servers and outdated technologies. This architecture was causing long development cycles, making the organization less competitive. Developers’ productivity was also dropping due to high technical debt.
Solution
Azure cloud offered some of the foundational features like container orchestration, app engine, integration, API gateway, monitoring and others, making cloud-specific modernization a natural choice.
Modernization strategy involved reverse engineering of on-premise applications, domain-specific grouping the product backlogs by, adopting domain-driven design, and using open source cloud-friendly software with CI/CD pipeline. We transformed the applications to a .NET core framework using cloud-native design principles on Azure cloud. The solution was developed using Azure App Services, front door and service bus following the agile development approach with two-week sprints.
Outcomes
- Reduction in Mean Time for Ticket Resolution (MTTR) by 30%
- Increase in application and infrastructure uptime to 99.9%
- Real-time visibility of application and infra metrics
- Enabled bi-weekly MVP delivery
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Powering shop floor efficiency with data analytics
A new custom manufacturing application with real-time dashboards replaces a diesel engine maker’s outdated build-specification legacy system and eliminates production delays.
Client
A leading diesel engine manufacturer
Goal
Reduce bottlenecks on the production line that arise from last-minute changes to orders and ensure compliance with build instructions
Tools and Technologies
Windows, SQL Server, C#, .NET, ESB, HTML5, Angular, GitHub, JIRA, Visual Studio, and WebStrom
Business Challenge
A diesel engine manufacturer based in Detroit faced frequent production delays. The cause of the inefficiency was its build book system. The manufacturer used a printed build book to communicate the specifications of the engine being built to the production floor. But, often after the book was sent to the shop floor, the manufacturer had to make changes to specifications.
In such cases, those working on the production line would not be able to use the printed build book. Waiting for a reprinted book would halt production. As a result, the changes were usually communicated outside the manual and assumed to be followed. If the new specifications weren’t followed, they would be discovered only in quality assurance, leading to a loss of time and dollars.
Solution
The client wanted a solution to resolve bottlenecks created by the printed build book and ensure compliance with build instructions. Ideally, the build book is dynamically pushed onto a handheld device assigned to the shop floor. The system would allow managers to update the specifications in the build book on the fly and alert the production team to the changes.
The device would also communicate the status of production to managers. For example, they would know which work center is working on an engine so that relevant pages of the build book could be updated and displayed to those work centers.
Iris custom-built an application that allowed real-time updates of the build book. It was designed to push the build book to work center operators on V10 devices (RFID transponders) with screen sizes ranging from 3 inches to 10 inches. The solution included a consolidated dashboard that provided the management near real-time visibility of work centers and the status of the engine production.
Outcomes
During Phase 1 of the project, we deployed 250 V10 devices. After a pilot run of four weeks, the client stopped printing build books; the handheld devices with our application were a superior alternative.
The solution helped eliminate printing costs and allowed the manufacturer to accommodate last-minute changes in specifications without disrupting production.
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Global pivot from physical to online tests
System modernization helped a multinational educational testing and assessment organization overcome COVID-19 disruptions to deliver seamless and accurate digital testing.
Client
A leading educational testing and assessment services company
Goal
Switch from in-person to online testing
Tools and Technologies
AWS Serverless, Dynamo DB, Node.js, Typescript, Java, Jenkins, and Angular
Business Challenge
Our client, which provides educational testing and assessment services, faced an existential threat with the pandemic-era lockdowns and social distancing requirements. The testing centers it operated at physical locations were unable to open, leaving thousands of students worldwide in a state of uncertainty.
Our client had to switch from in-person testing centers to a digital-first or online testing solution almost overnight. To achieve that, it had to migrate rapidly from legacy systems to the cloud. It also needed to ensure the sanctity and accuracy of its tests while delivering a seamless digital experience to its customers. Other challenges included the ability to dynamically scale up or scale down capacity in response to demand, maintain acceptable service levels, and enable thousands of expert test raters to access and evaluate tests.
Solution
Iris Software stepped in to facilitate a strategic digital pivot in the business model to secure the company’s future. Modernization efforts that were underway at the company even before the pandemic were accelerated as a digital upgrade became imperative. We shifted the data stored on legacy infrastructure to the cloud.
Our team developed a new testing interface that would work overnight across devices, geographies, and different internet connections. Switching the testing operations to the cloud with scalable capacity could help manage the surge in the number of users for the tests. Iris also deployed automation and AI tools to deliver superior experiences for test raters. Those who faced challenges while attempting to grade tests were provided with an always-on AI-based solution to automate the troubleshooting and ticketing process.
Outcomes
The client now has scalable, digital-first testing capabilities to meet all its testing requirements.
- Cloud-based testing enabled on-demand access to students, evaluators, and employees.
- The remote testing options are accurate, secure and safe from external threats.
- A strong focus on automation and user experience has allowed for optimized online offerings.
- Surges in demand for tests can be met rapidly and at scale with minimal intervention.
- Thanks to the always-on cloud offerings, service levels are easily maintained.
- The successful digital pivot has led to strong interest in a hybrid operating model to safeguard the business from threats in the future.
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The power of in-sprint automation
A large securities firm sped up time-to-market with end-to-end test automation on the cloud.
Client
A leading securities trading firm
Goal
Build a cloud-based automation framework to test client’s trading platform
Tools and Technologies
C#, Ranorex, TestRail, Simulators and Selenium
Business Challenge
The client had a legacy trading platform that had grown and evolved over time. The platform consisted of a stack of 33 applications, built on a variety of technologies and architectures.
Testing new features and additions was proving to be a big challenge. A simple change in one feature would warrant a verification of the complete application. To ensure that any change does not affect other functionality, the client needed to do extensive regression testing and verification.
This was a cumbersome process with over 20,000 or 30,000 test cases being checked and executed manually. The trading firm had to deploy over 20 people to carry out this exercise. The client had tried to automate the testing process with a variety of tools but was not able to get the efficiencies it wanted.
In addition, the client had multiple squads working on different apps, functionality and features. Each squad used its own automation suite. It was becoming a challenge to co-ordinate the work of the different squads and ensure that changes made by a squad did not impact the overall functionality of the platform. Iris’s brief was to design and deploy a common cloud-based test automation framework for the client’s trading platform to ensure that it could launch new features faster.
Solution
Using its cloud-based ready-to-deploy test automation framework, Iris sped up the deployment of new features for the client’s trading platform. The cloud solution, based on Amazon Web Services (AWS), featured continuous testing of multiple products on a common framework layer. It allowed for complete capacity planning of spinned cloud instances and need-based shutdowns.
Iris executed the project using acceptance test driven development (ATDD), a methodology that involves collaboration between customers, business teams and development teams. The teams jointly created the user stories and put down the acceptance criteria for any feature or functionality. Then tests were designed within the common framework to check if the feature met the acceptance criteria.
What was unique about the approach? Typically, automation is introduced towards the end of a development cycle. You would find that, in most projects, developers bring in automation in Sprint 4 for features developed in Sprint 1, 2 and 3. As a result, return on investment isn’t maximized. Our team introduced ‘in-sprint’ automation, enabling 90% test automation with every sprint. This resulted in more efficient and faster testing, and cost savings for the client.
Outcomes
The client’s deployment speed improved significantly with 90% faster execution in each sprint cycle and 80% faster script development.
The cloud-based solution is 100% configurable for on-demand execution on AWS, which reduced the client’s cloud infrastructure costs by 70%.
The new ability for complete capacity planning through the use of infrastructure-as-code (IaC) for spinning up cloud instances helped the client achieve end-to-end (E2E) automation of regression/ functional test cases.
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Data consolidation speeds up drug search
An automated cloud-based consolidation application for R&D data helped a pharmaceutical company improve turnaround time to create Approval for Product Release (APR) documents.
Client
A U.S.-based pharmaceutical multinational corporation
Goal
Reduce turnaround time for APRs
Tools and Technologies
Amazon’s AWS OPCx, Webmethods, natural language processing (NLP), neural networks, and Python programming
Business Challenge
In pharmaceutical R&D, data is generated from several sources: the process, patients, retailers, and caregivers, among others. Pharmaceutical R&D organizations that use the traditional way of creating APRs manually consolidate paper specifications into binders across all R&D functions.
Specific regional rules, compliance mandates, and external regulations were slowing down the client’s workflow. Many spreadsheets in multiple formats were leading to errors from manual entry and duplication of data — the inevitable “swivel effect” that results from data being pulled out from disparate, unconnected software packages.
Iris was approached to improve the process of collecting and using data from multiple sources; the improvement would help the client identify and develop new potential drug candidates faster.
Solution
Iris’s team of 12 specialists designed, developed, tested, and deployed a cloud-based application that integrates data from multiple regions and eight different systems into a single, unified interface for the client’s users. Our application unified the creation and management of the client’s workflows across its lines of business and 20 different product families.
The development environment included Amazon’s AWS OPCx, Webmethods, natural language processing (NLP), neural networks, and Python programming.
Outcomes
Within a year of the application’s release, 2,800 users were using the application, with 55% of APRs turning around in 10 calendar weeks or less. Thanks to the in-memory data grid, the response time of transactions across the board has been brought down to nearly 2 seconds.
The cloud-based application developed by Iris ensures that data is automatically and seamlessly shared between systems that were previously stand-alone and required the tedious manual entry of data.
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Cloud-native app opens new markets for trading services
A prominent bonds trading network expands its market reach with new products and geographies.
Client
The world’s leading provider of trading services for fixed income products
Goal
Create an IT architecture to support growth across markets and products
Tools and Technologies
AWS Cloud, Java, Springboot, React JS, React, Redis, Kafka, C#, Ranorex and Test Rails
Business Challenge
The client, a market leader in bonds trading, was expanding to new markets, acquiring new businesses, introducing new products and adding features to existing offerings. To support its growth plans, it needed an agile, modern, cloud-based platform.
Some of the business needs the client wanted to address with the new solution were:
- How do we achieve scale with minimal latency in operations and service?
- How do we integrate new businesses seamlessly and without disruption?
- How do we roll out new features faster to improve customer experience and get a competitive edge?
- How can we use data to help customers make better trading decisions?
- How can we monetize the data?
As a solution partner, we had to not only create a new IT architecture for the client’s trading platform but also constantly re-engineer and improve the architecture to quickly meet emerging business needs.
Solution
We deployed a scalable, highly available auctions solution on the AWS cloud using Java, Springboot, React JS, React, Redis, and Kafka.
Optimized algorithms now achieve best matching with minimal latency while offering full price transparency. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) provide greater insight and real-time price discovery for specific asset classes.
The new cloud-based architecture enabled the client to create products and monetize market data. Those products helped customers get accurate data in real-time to take better and faster trading decisions.
Test automation across the trade lifecycle using a combination of C#, Ranorex, Test Rails helped the client update user interfaces (UI) without reducing performance. It also eased integration linkages between the acquired solution’s frontend and the client’s existing backend.
Outcomes
The introduction of Agile methodology and the cloud-native application has helped the client significantly speed up time-to-market for new releases. It is now able to make releases several times a year.
The new IT architecture now allows the client to offer trading in Muni bonds (an acquired product) and U.S. treasuries (a new service). The solution also enables the client to support Chinese markets.
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Real-time tracking of a global container fleet
A cloud-based GPS-integrated solution delivered, for our client, real-time visibility of its shipments, bringing efficiencies in time, cost and regulatory compliance.
Client
A diversified global business group with a strong presence in maritime services.
Goal
Real-time tracking of a global container fleet
Tools and Technologies
Microsoft Azure, Node JS, C#, Bootstrap, and HTML5
Business Challenge
The pandemic has made it critical for transportation and logistics firms to manage their assets (or fleets) more efficiently.
Demand is high for real-time asset tracking and tracing solutions. For the marine services business of our client, real-time management of a global fleet of containers required continuous, global tracking.
Tracking the container fleet and meeting compliance requirements was laborious and error-prone, often leading to delays and lost opportunities. The client also did not have a mechanism to track customer usage of pay-per-use containers.
We were tasked with creating multi-tenant based cloud application that would be optimized for cost and yet not compromise the user experiences of customers and field teams.
Solution
Our decade-long experience in radio-frequency identification (RFID) helped us address this challenge. Our information engineers, UX designers, solution architects, and business analysts worked onsite with the customer to test scenarios and create a new architecture along with new user experiences and interfaces.
We built the solution using the latest Microsoft Azure cloud services and BizTalk and RFID middleware for an integrated framework involving multiple customers (tenants) and services. An offshore team engineered the new application with the capabilities sought by the client; the architecture team helped create new systems and environments for development, quality assurance (QA), user acceptance testing (UAT), and production.
The solution was capable of handling large amounts of streaming data with the help of edge services located near-site. Customized workflows captured container movement within each site, while GPS services tracked container movement across the globe. The application, which was deployed well within the scheduled deadline, enables post-production maintenance and enhancements from our offshore center.
Outcomes
We engineered real-time tracking and tracing for the client’s global container fleet, with map support and enhanced personalization for users based on location and asset class. Responsive design ensured that the application could be seamlessly used across various devices. Our experience with RFID and cloud-based engineering helped us anticipate and prepare the scenarios well in advance so that solutions could be delivered to the client fast. This significantly reduced the time for the client to prepare cost and compliance status reports, and location-based dashboards for KPIs. The near-real time tracking of containers reduced the time to calculate exact container usage and certificate status from days and hours to a few minutes.
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Setting a high standard for member experience
We helped a global standards organization build a cloud-native microservices-based platform to store and share data on billions of products with members.
Client
One of the world’s leading retail standards organization
Goal
Build a 24x7 cloud-based platform capable of storing and sharing data on billions of products
Tools and Technologies
Java, Python, NodeJS, .NET, Azure PostgreSQL, Azure SQL, MongoDB, Redis, Azure DevOps, Pipelines, Git, Docker, Kubernetes, Azure App Service
Business Challenge
Our client is a global standards organization. Its products and codes are used by millions of brand owners, retailers and supply chain partners around the world.
The organization needed an always-on, scalable cloud-based platform capable of storing and sharing data on billions of products and related information with members and partners across the world.
The client also wanted the ability to onboard member organizations quickly and seamlessly.
They wanted the business capabilities developed on a platform to be available as modern and secure enterprise-level APIs.
Solution
We chose a microservices architecture for high agility, loose coupling, independent deployability and maintainability.
We followed an API design-first approach and designed according to the standards-based API specification (OpenAPI Specification).
In line with best practices for securely publishing and maintaining APIs, our team deployed the Azure API management solution. We used Azure APIM developer portal to deliver a superior developer onboarding experience. The solution had other features as well:
- Design and implementation of the Azure Virtual network for securely hosting the platform.
- A cloud-native architecture using the Azure AppService and an Azure-managed Kubernetes platform.
- Comprehensive performance testing and optimization at all levels to meet strict SLAs.
- Security testing and vulnerability assessment to ensure secure APIs.
Outcomes
- A robust and secure API platform that handles 200,000 API requests per day.
- 50 million codes uploaded in 40 product categories across more than 130 countries.
- Delivered a developer portal for quick onboarding of application developers.
- New 7-step verification mechanism led to the creation of new revenue streams.
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