Mr Joachim Nathan: With the Next Gen NBN connectivity option, SIX is able to subscribe to lower bandwidth and scale it up on-demand whenever extra capacity is needed.

Series on Next Gen NBN adoption

SIX Financial Information is leveraging Singapore’s Next Generation Nationwide Broadband Network (Next Gen NBN) to cut costs, streamline its business processes and tap on new opportunities in the financial services sector.

As a financial data vendor, SIX specialises in procuring, processing and distributing international financial information globally in real time. Its information database includes structured and encoded securities administration data for more than nine million financial instruments.

Headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, SIX Financial Information has offices in 24 countries including Singapore which provides sales and client support to its Asia Pacific customers who subscribe its financial information-based solutions.

“Singapore is a major data processing hub in the Asia Pacific region for procuring, processing and distributing exchange feeds,” said Mr Joachim Nathan, IT Manager, SIX.

While service organisations in Singapore traditionally work with telecoms operators to provide the network infrastructure necessary for communication with its international offices and clients, SIX decided to go a
different route.

“We did an analysis on setting up a network service directly versus signing up with a telecoms provider, and the benefits we could glean from doing it ourselves were significant enough for us to take this route,” said Mr Nathan.

For one thing, the cost of connecting SIX’s office at Suntec City to its two data centres using the Next Gen NBN was about 20-30 per cent less compared with getting a similar service from a telco. But even more compelling than that was the burst capability of the connection that was being offered by the Next Gen NBN Operating Company
Nucleus Connect.

With the Next Gen NBN connectivity option provided by Nucleus Connect, SIX is able to subscribe to lower bandwidth and scale it up on-demand whenever extra capacity is needed. With this, Mr Nathan no longer has to provision capacity for peak usage and have it under-utilised the rest of the time.

“This (the on-demand burst capability) is something that is not offered by current telecoms providers,” he noted. “It represents a different approach to managing our needs, and has resulted in not just better control of our costs but also improved service delivery, and has given us the flexibility to scale up or down according to the quality of service required.”

While SIX’s service infrastructure is currently set up to meet the internal needs of the organisation, the company is also looking to build on new business opportunities presented by the use of the Next Gen NBN. “The ability to directly tap on the Next Gen NBN has changed our perception of how we can deliver an end-to-end solution,” said Mr Nathan. “It has simplified service delivery and kept costs down, making it feasible for us to package our market data feeds and extend this to clients within the next year or so.”

In addition, the company also hopes to work with data centres in Singapore to offer its financial services to their customers in the financial services industry. “Many financial customers house their infrastructure at data centres, and leveraging Next Gen NBN will make it easier to interconnect at higher speeds and lower costs,” said Mr Nathan. “Our value proposition is that of a gateway to our range of financial services.”

For more information on SIX Financial Information, please visit their website .