Redburn, leveraging Microsoft Azure for agility 

Together with Redburn we enabled continual innovation through the adoption of public cloud services. To continue their commitment to ongoing innovation and customer experience, Redburn, Europe’s largest independent equities broker, was looking to increase their adoption of public cloud on Microsoft Azure for both cost optimization benefits and greater agility and reliability. As a leading Microsoft Azure Expert MSP, we were selected by Redburn to provide design, automation and operational deployment of new Kubernetes-based workloads on Microsoft Azure. 

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Driving innovation in financial services

One of Redburn’s digital solutions, IDEAS, has a straightforward purpose: to help investors outperform equity markets through active stock and sector selection.

To do so, it provides tools intended to identify potential price inefficiencies: to monitor and highlight these and enable clients to construct equity strategies, analyze their portfolios and generate investment ideas. These tools use accounting, consensus-forecast and equity market data. They are configured in accessible and intuitive ways to provide unique insights, making extensive use of graphical output.

Above all, IDEAS is intended to present complex messages arising from combinations of investment factors and measures in ways that appear simple – and that yield positive results over most periods.

Redburn have a focus on keeping the delivery of digital solutions such as IDEAS ahead of the technology curve; to ensure usability and reliability of the services for their investors.

At the core of their strategy is leveraging public cloud for agility, reliability, security and to create opportunities for further innovation.

Microsoft Azure was selected as the best destination for IDEAS, with subsequent analysis to identify an appropriate application modernization approach to scale and run the IDEAS application with confidence.

Microsoft Azure has already proven its value to Redburn as a foundation to realize the benefits of public cloud. However, the new deployment of IDEAS, with innovative technology, provides an opportunity to accelerate and enhance this cloud-first strategy and so Redburn studied the market for a Cloud Managed Service Provider (MSP) to share their journey and provide expert guidance.

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Which services? 

Azure Managed Services 

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Which technologies? 

Microsoft Azure , Azure Kubernetes Service 

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Which partners? 

Microsoft 

‘From the very first discussion, NTT’s team was enthusiastic and diligent in driving down into the detail. This covered both the needs of our internal and external stakeholders as well as the technology solution that we have jointly created.’ 
Matthew Norman, Head of Technology , Redburn

Enabling the move to a microservices-based platform

We were selected from a range of prospective partners in recognition of our experience, cultural fit and attention to detail.

‘In our industry, attention to detail is of paramount importance. This is reflected in our strategy and implementation of technology,’ states Redburn’s Head of Technology, Matthew Norman. ‘From the very first discussion, NTT’s team was enthusiastic and diligent in driving down into the detail. This covered both the needs of our internal and external stakeholders as well as the technology solution that we have jointly created. The accuracy of this being documented and the insightful recommendations helped to cement our choice that they were the right Microsoft Azure Expert MSP for us to continue with on our Azure journey.’

With our experience in the design, and 24/7 operation of critical digital platforms in Microsoft Azure, our team understood Redburn’s aspiration to expand the use of microservices across their IT landscape and therefore identified the Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) as the optimum solution.

In implementing, automating and operating a broad range of critical container-based solutions for our other clients, the challenges and opportunities are business-as-usual considerations for NTT.

We used our Cloud Transformation Framework to facilitate a series of Sprints to firstly create the architecture principles to govern the multi-region public cloud deployment and integration into Redburn’s existing private IT estate.

This was followed by a re-configuration of all existing Microsoft Azure solutions to ensure operational reliability and modernization and then the architecture and deployment to Azure Kubernetes Service, including application integration.

Exploring the potential of the public cloud together

The cultural fit between the Redburn and NTT teams along with the choice of technology meant that there was a strong alignment with Redburn’s strategic direction.

In the world of financial services there is a lot of opportunity to increase the pace of innovation while improving flexibility, reliability and compliance. By leveraging this partnership, they are able to fully explore the potential of Intelligent Cloud on Microsoft Azure as a driver of innovation on their digital products.

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