CLSA Boosts Network Infrastructure Bandwidth with
Managed DWDM Network System

Hong Kong-based equities house ensures transaction integrity and system resiliency with upgraded DWDM network infrastructure

Cisco Systems (HK) Limited and Hutchison Global Communications (HGC) have jointly announced that CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, one of Asia’s top brokerage, investment banking, and private equity houses, has implemented a new network infrastructure based on dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) technology that boosts bandwidth 200-fold and provides far greater reliability and resilience across its trading and core operations.

Prior to deploying the new optical network solution at CLSA’s Hong Kong headquarters, any network interruptions in the 24,000-square-foot (2,232-square-meters) dealer-room would potentially cost millions of dollars in revenue.

The new network, based on the Cisco ONS 15530 DWDM switch, integrates data networking and storage replication over an intelligent metro optical network. The significant upgrade brings greater access, stability and speed to CLSA’s extensive financial research database, brokerage transactions, settlement systems and other internal functions. The network also supports dealer-room operations across 12 other cities in the region, with Taipei, Seoul, Tokyo and Mumbai ranking highest in turnover.

Leveraging its well-recognised experience in providing telecommunications services to the financial sector, HGC provided project management: from solution design, solution testing, to service implementation, provision and maintenance. The seamless integration between HGC’s optical fibre network and Cisco’s DWDM platform allows highly efficient data transmission and guarantees maximum network service availability.

CLSA’s previous network infrastructure between its primary data centre in Admiralty and the secondary facility in Kowloon was not only expensive to maintain but also prevented implementation of remote clustering and had less diversity and resiliency. These problems could result in costly disruptions to the financial transactions made by CLSA’s brokers and customers. When considering how best to upgrade their network, CLSA leaders determined improved system availability and WAN resiliency with a lower operating expense to be the primary considerations.

Cisco’s DWDM technology offered CLSA a way to increase network throughput, data replication and resiliency in a cost-effective manner. With 50 percent of its transactions handled electronically, representing tens of millions of dollars, CLSA required greater availability and reduced occurrences of network outages. The Cisco networking solution increased network resiliency, allowing CLSA to maintain an acceptable fault tolerance for its mission-critical transaction systems while still maintaining low costs.

The new network also involved the upgrading of CLSA’s DS-3 lines to high-speed Fast Ethernet connections, and upgrading of the broker’s storage area network.

“Cisco and Hutchison Global Communications offered the best solution in terms of resiliency and cost savings,” said Andrew Yu, head of infrastructure at CLSA. “Data replication bandwidth increased six-fold with higher resiliency and at a cost of half as much as maintaining the existing system. We now have an infrastructure capable of supporting straight-through processing of time-critical electronic transactions with sufficient load balancing to allow outlying offices to access both data centres.”

As the first brokerage to use the Cisco DWDM platform, CLSA builds on its reputation as a technology innovator. By having Hong Kong as CLSA’s headquarters, decisions are made locally, resulting in swifter action than at other multinational banks where the decision comes from overseas. This rapid-response capability allowed CLSA to better implement technology solutions to address crises such as the international outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which had forced the cancellation of CLSA’s annual Investors’ Forum. Instead the company deployed an advanced holographic video conferencing system to conduct the Forum virtually in 22 offices across nine countries.

Constantly on the lookout for technology that will provide an advantage, CLSA plans on implementing a full IP telephony system in the near future. “We have a high demand for voice and data traffic now, and we are looking to move to a converged network to also give us video capabilities. We chose Cisco as our network solution provider, in part, because we trust in Cisco’s ability to offer an efficient and cost-effective upgrade path as we move towards a fully converged infrastructure,” said Yu.

“The Cisco DWDM platform gives CLSA a cost-effective and efficient way to add more applications or services and increase bandwidth to meet traffic flow,” said Errol Chan, general manager, Cisco Systems Hong Kong. “The cost savings when coupled with transaction integrity, database resiliency and higher connection speeds affords CLSA with a considerable competitive edge.”

“HGC’s extensive and self-built fibre optic network is an ideal platform for enhanced network resiliency and reliability. Our service provision to CLSA demonstrates the benefits that a fibre optic network can bring to enterprises which have stringent requirements for network services,” said Steve Lam, sales and marketing director of HGC. “We are glad that we can contribute our proven experience in design, implementation and maintenance of advanced fibre optic solutions in CLSA’s DWDM network infrastructure project. This also further demonstrates our strength in serving sizeable customers in the financial sector.”

CLSA, a unit of France’s Credit Agricole/Credit Lyonnais banking group, is recognised as one of the top research, sales and execution houses in Asia employing more than 600 dedicated professionals across the region. It ranks as one of the largest agency brokers in Asia supported by state-of-the-art execution systems.

The Cisco ONS 15530 is a highly scalable metro DWDM multiservice aggregation platform that integrates data networking, storage, and legacy applications over a metro optical network. With an industry-leading eight ports that support Fibre Channel, Fibre Connection (FICON), or Gigabit Ethernet, or 40 ports of Enterprise Systems Connection (ESCON) per 10-Gbps wavelength and multiservice support of Synchronous Optical Network/Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SONET/SDH), and other protocols, the Cisco ONS 15530 is well positioned to effectively support the consolidation of voice, data, storage, and video networks onto a single converged network infrastructure.