Argentium Solutions has a very specific target group of clients: businesses that rely heavily on network and virtualization technologies to complete their organizations' core mission.  These organizations come in many forms, across many verticals, but are typically hedge funds, financial services firms, cloud/content/hosting/cloud computing/Internet service providers, k-12 & higher education, and research organizations.

While serving these clients, Argentium Solutions maintains its track record of success by partnering with qualified experts who can help to deliver the best possible solution.

Challenge

A multi-national, industry-leading proprietary trading firm—with an envied high-frequency trading strategy responsible for more than 1% of the volume on the NYSE & NASDAQ on any given day—experienced tremendous growth in their requirements for raw market data. However, the firm was running into the limits of their ability to consume the data, and was experiencing “gapping.”

Solution

Argentium Solutions collaborated with the firm’s staff to create a next generation network architecture based on optical technology such as dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM). This network would to be able to withstand peak market data rates and provide the capacity to exceed projected market data rates over the next 24 months.

Benefit

The customer was able to leverage Argentium Solutions’ expertise to create a best-of breed network, while continuing to focus on the existing production network and business applications. The design, staging, deployment, and testing of the network was executed seamlessly in a manner that is easily repeatable for their operations staff.

The new network provided a latency reduction of up to 30%, while also reducing the time to deliver new services by weeks and in some cases months.  As of the date this study was written, the new network was on schedule to pay for itself within 12 months from deployment.

Result

Today, the new market data network infrastructure center is at the leading edge of the technology curve, allowing this prestigious firm to take advantage of trading opportunities that would have passed them by on the previous generation of the network infrastructure. The firm is already looking to leverage the next generation of the optical technology, utilizing the foundation created by the engagement with Argentium Solutions.

Challenge:

An emerging multi-national cloud computing and managed Internet hosting provider with offices in the United States and Europe had become a victim of its own success, experiencing “growing pains” and small outages that affected some customers but not others.  The provider could not reliably deliver service in accordance with the expectations held by their customers, and as a result could not expand their business.

Solution:

Argentium Solutions performed a review of the existing network architecture and performed measurements to gain an understanding of the traffic.  The comprehensive review identified microbursts within the infrastructure, showing a need for an increase in bandwidth.

In conjunction with the organization’s technology team, Argentium Solutions designed a series of changes for the network architecture that effectively doubled the capacity of the network.  In addition to topological changes, Argentium Solutions identified some devices that were ill-suited to the tasks assigned and recommended replacement platforms.  A new network architecture that incorporated the new network platform was developed.

Benefit:

The review performed by Argentium Solutions educated the hosting provider on the issues within its network, allowing it to understand where further investment in network infrastructure would be required.  The short-term performance issues were identified, documented, and resolved in an expedient manner.  The new network architecture addressed the shortcomings in the existing platform, leaving room for expansion over the next 3 years.

Result:

The short and long-term benefits provided by the solution allowed the hosting provider to continue to expand its business.  The new network architecture featured technologies that greatly enhance the availability and resiliency of the network, dramatically improving the level of service received by customers.

Challenge

A multi-national boutique investment bank with offices in the United States, Europe, and Asia was experiencing outages with mission-critical applications (such as Microsoft Exchange) and additional problems with its aging infrastructure.

Solution

Argentium Solutions developed a strategy for the firm’s existing technology staff that utilized technologies such as VMWare server virtualization, Microsoft Exchange 2010, and Dell EqualLogic iSCSI Storage Area Network arrays.

Benefit

The server virtualization initiative allowed the firm to consolidate many of its physical servers as virtual hosts running on newer, more powerful and efficient hardware.  This consolidation resulted in a reduction of datacenter real estate as well as power consumption—allowing the firm to save money on operational expenses, while also improving performance and uptime.  The architecture of this platform also sparked strategic conversations about the firm’s disaster recovery and business continuity planning.

Result

The new infrastructure has dramatically improved the uptime and performance of the Microsoft Exchange platform for the organization—with unplanned outages “a distant memory,” according to one of the technologists.  The virtualization foundation created by the engagement with Argentium Solutions has also considerably reduced the time for new application deployments for this organization; the time for new server deployments is measured in minutes, as opposed to weeks.

Challenge

Irvington, NJ., a school district with many challenges, was burdened with an aging network infrastructure and increasing Operational Expenditure costs. These increasing OpEx costs were the result of their incumbent network hardware vendors’ maintenance and licensing structure, and the decision was made to move away from that platform. These costs ate into their budget, and many technology initiatives were put on hold as a result.

Solution

Argentium Solutions collaborated with the firm’s staff as their preferred vendor to create a next generation network architecture based on 10-Gigabit Ethernet technology, and migration to dynamic routing protocols. A vendor agnostic approach provides many benefits. One member of the team commented that “By migrating to Brocade, we would be able to upgrade the entire network backbone to 10-Gigabit Technology for what a 1-Gigabit network solution would cost from our existing vendor. It just makes sense.”

Benefit

The School District IT Team was able to leverage Argentium Solutions’ many years of expertise in designing and deploying best-of breed networks, while they continued to focus on supporting the applications needed by the School District’s faculty, staff, and students. The design, staging, deployment, and testing of the network was Seamlessly Integrated in an easily-repeatable manner, ensuring that the continued operation of the network would be a non-issue once the project was complete.

Deploying a solution based on Brocade’s technology across the 12 Schools greatly reduced the individual number of devices in the management domain, allowed for an increase in the port count, and provided a performance boost by allowing supporting end stations to connect to the network at Gigabit Ethernet speeds. This increase in bandwidth also resulted in a reduction of latency, providing a better experience to the users of the network.

Result

Today, the new network infrastructure serves as the backbone for the educational initiatives under development within the School District. 

The ongoing costs, due to network hardware vendor maintenance, are a fraction of what they would spend in the past, leaving funds available for other plans. Some of these plans include wireless networking, desktop and server virtualization, and expansion of BYOD initiatives.