The migration of Markit’s enterprise data management (EDM) solution to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud has attracted six clients since it went live last April. The clients are split between North America and Europe and range from asset managers to third-party application providers using the company’s platform.
Markit has been offering managed services using its own server farms for some time and decided to move to the AWS cloud after reviewing the security, accessibility and technology of its software assets and conferring with Markit EDM users already using the AWS cloud independently. As well as EDM, the company has migrated its thinkFolio front-office trade order management platform and Wall Street Office outsourced mid and back-office services to the AWS cloud.
The move is designed to optimise the performance and scalability of Markit’s products, as well as speed up time to market and provide clients with a flexible solution. Spiros Giannaros, managing director and global head of Markit EDM, explains: “The difference between using a private cloud and AWS is that we can leverage Amazon’s huge investment in technology, data access and security. AWS provides infrastructure-as-a-service and we provide software-as-a-service, including a technical service that helps clients size their EDM requirements and then manages and upgrades the application and integrates all necessary data on their behalf. The benefits for clients are cost savings and increased operational efficiency, including improved time to market and the ability to scale capacity up or down quickly.”
Giannaros also describes potential gains emanating from the flexibility provided by AWS and Markit EDM, perhaps the implementation of a hybrid cloud and on-premise system to meet specific client needs, or use of the cloud as a temporary development environment before migrating a solution back into a firm’s production environment.
Andrew Eisen, managing director, cloud strategy, enterprise software at Markit, comments: “Our industry faces many dynamic challenges. This partnership with AWS will enable us to be more creative in finding solutions to challenges faced by our customers.”
While Markit’s initial users of EDM in the AWS cloud are all new clients and the company will continue to sell on-premise EDM solutions, Giannaros expects some existing clients to transition to EDM in the cloud, perhaps during a version upgrade or as a result of a hardware refresh, and also expects more prospects to join them.
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