Newly Formed Hedge Fund Chooses WCS All-In-One IP Communications Platform for Cleveland and New York Offices

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1 Newly Formed Hedge Fund Chooses WCS All-In-One IP Communications Platform for Cleveland and New York Offices Profile: Ohio-based investment manager with US$150M AUM deploys IP communications system for new headquarters and satellite office in New York City This firm is launching fund based on a credit US long/short strategy with offices in Cleveland and New York City. They were seeking a single, scalable platform that could meet the needs of their trading desks, executive, marketing, research and back-office teams. The key decision-making criteria included: that the system could be easily managed, offered trading turret, enterprise voice and unified communications capabilities as well as extremely high reliability. Another requirements was that the vendor have the presence and resources to be a single provider of the deployment and support of both systems according to stringent service level commitments in both Cleveland and New York City as well as other cities as the firm grows. The smaller satellite team in New York City will be supported off the main system controller in Cleveland via a high-speed MPLS connection and remote workers have access to their turrets or IP phones via a secure VPN connection that works wherever there is an Internet connection. The Voice Communications Platform (VCP) offers an array of more than 500 features, functions and applications, including unified communications/messaging and support for mobile workers in addition to all of the critical trading turret/hoot n holler capabilities the traders need. The system can be integrated with various enterprise applications such as Microsoft Lync, Active Directory, Outlook and SharePoint as well as Blackberry, Android and Apple mobile devices. The system is scalable to thousands of IP devices in a compact rack-mount system controller that can be deployed in a proprietary appliance or on industry-standard servers. The system is also the first voice communications platform certified to work with VMware virtualization solutions.

2 Description Top 20 Hedge Fund Selects Wesley Clover Solutions All-In-One IP Communications Platform for New York and Hong Kong Offices Profile: Connecticut-based global, diversified investment manager with US$12B AUM deploys IP communications system for traders and office staff in New York City Office This hedge fund firm, in the midst of a project to relocate key branch offices in New York City and Hong Kong, was seeking a voice communications platform that would be suitable for both their trading floor teams and office staff. The key decision-making criteria included: that the system could be easily managed, offered extremely high reliability and that the vendor have the global resources to manage the deployment and support of both systems according to stringent service level commitments their missioncritical trading operations required. The initial system configurations for New York City and Hong Kong include: 2u rack-mount dual-bus (TDM/IP) System Controller including: High-availability, clustered call control appliance Scalable to 1,400 IP devices Capable of supporting 8 digital links (PRI/ARD), SIP trunking, analog circuits Redundant power supply and RAID drive Resilient System Controller (Active-Active Design) IP Turrets (rugged, high-performance trading devices w/two handset, 96 buttons, 200 speed dials) for the Trading Floor Team IP Phones for Executives and Support Staff Embedded Voice Mail System The resilient System Controller design (installed in the same equipment room) provides the customer with % availability of the System Controller environment. The System Controllers are actively synchronizing databases in real-time via System Data Synchronization (SDS) which ensures that, in the event of a failure, the database of the back-up system is 100% current. After evaluating platforms from several suppliers, including incumbent system providers for their headquarters office, the firm selected Wesley Clover Solutions for these reasons:

3 Unique ability in supporting both back office and trading floor applications in a single platform The small, consolidated system footprint and scalability within the 2u rack and modest power requirements meant that they could save space and minimize build out costs The browser-based system management platform enables IT staff to manage and make changes from wherever they are working, at any time of day The low per position cost offered by mixing and matching a variety of IP devices offered a significant cost-savings when compared with deploying a separate PBX and specialty trading turret system. The single system increases productivity and ease of collaboration among trading floor and non-trading floor staff by having all staff on the same system. The domain expertise, service orientation and track record of the vendor with a focus on supporting financial trading firms made the decision-makers comfortable they were working with a service provider that understood the mission-critical nature of their business. By selecting the Wesley Clover Solutions single platform system the customer now has a resilient, advanced IP communications platform capable of supporting all back office and trading floor staff that is normalized within their IT environment and does not require specialized certifications or training to do day-to-day system management. The Voice Communications Platform (VCP) offers an array of more than 500 features, functions and applications, including unified communications and messaging. The system can be integrated with various enterprise applications like Microsoft Office Communication Server (OCS), Active Directory, Outlook and SharePoint as well as RIM s Blackberry mobile devices. The system is scalable to thousands of IP devices in a compact rack-mount system controller that can be deployed in a proprietary appliance or on industry-standard servers. The system is also the first voice communications platform certified to work with VMware virtualization solutions.

4 Global Online Markets Leader Selects Wesley Clover Solutions for Multi-Office IP Communications Platform Profile: New Jersey-based provider of online markets for equities, fixed income and derivatives, market data and post-trade services with more than 200 staff and $300 trillion in trading volume. This growing electronic market maker wanted to overhaul legacy communications infrastructure to support a showcase executive, sales and trading office in midtown Manhattan and connect it via IP-WAN with their US headquarters in Jersey City, a disaster recovery/back office site in suburban New Jersey and a recently acquired voice broking subsidiary in downtown Manhattan. The existing legacy PBX in the headquarters office needed to be maintained until a second implementation phase and thus interconnected to the WCS IP Communications Platform via SIP trunking to enable four-digit dialing between the offices. In addition, a legacy turret system serving the company s recently acquired voice broking subsidiary also needed to be maintained. After evaluating platforms from many suppliers, including the global enterprise voice standard of the parent company, Cisco Call Manager, the firm decided to deploy the WCS platform for its flexibility in meeting both back office and trading floor applications, ability to interoperate with other manufacturer s turret and PBX systems, scalability to accommodate future branch offices, centralized management of all system nodes and endpoints through a simple browser-based GUI, unified communications capabilities and resilient, cost-effective design that assured business continuity for all employees across four NY metro area offices. By selecting the WCS single platform system the customer now has a resilient, advanced IP voice communications platform capable of supporting all back office and trading floor staff across the four offices. Employees can log-in to any IP Phone in any office location and bring up their user profile with access to voice mail, unified communications applications, DID and ringdown circuits. The Voice Communications Platform (VCP) offers an array of more than 500 features, functions and applications, can be integrated with various enterprise applications like Microsoft Office Communication Server (OCS), Active Directory and Outlook as well as RIM s Blackberry mobile devices and is scalable to thousands of IP devices in a compact rack-mount system controller that can be deployed in a proprietary appliance or on industry-standard servers. The system is also the first voice communications platform certified to work with VMware virtualization solutions.

5 Diversified Alternative Asset Manager Deploys Wesley Clover Solutions for Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery This Manhattan-based hedge fund with US$5B AUM needed to deploy a voice trading solution in their hot site back-up location in New Jersey and provide head traders and portfolio managers with home-based access to their trading counterparties. Their existing trading turret and PBX voice platforms were based on legacy technology so could not be easily extended to the alternative locations and would require dedicated T-1 facilities to the employee homes. Wesley Clover Solutions designed a Business Continuity Voice Solution which met all of the customer s criteria including: interoperability with their current voice systems (IPC and Avaya), enabling traders to see their ringdown and dial tone circuits at both the DR Hot Site and at home, low upfront and lifecycle costs and a platform that could be leveraged as they moved toward replacement of their legacy voice systems. In addition, the IP Voice Communications Platform demonstrated all of the requisite capacity, reliability and specialty functionality traders require including: two handsets, rugged design, support for multiple ringdown circuits and one-touch speed dialing, shared line appearances and floating answer keys, conference calling for eight traders and simple and secure remote connectivity to homes via broadband circuit. The firm saved more than $130K in acquisition and ongoing support costs and approximately $250K in T1 circuit costs over the course of five years by deploying the WCS solution instead of extending their existing systems. Moreover, when the company decides to migrate from their current trading turret and PBX systems, the WCS platform, now used only for DR, can be expanded to support all staff just by adding IP Turrets, Phones and software licenses.

6 International Communications Carrier Turns to Wesley Clover Solutions for Mission-Critical Voice Solution A Fortune 500 communications company operating one of the world s most advanced global networks selected Wesley Clover Solutions to provide an IP voice communications platform for their Global Network Operations Center (GNOC) in New Jersey, USA. This system ensures instant communications with other GNOC s and carrier partners who are monitoring the health of a global network carrying nearly 20 petabytes of data traffic on a normal business day and offers availability to its customers. In order to guarantee success, the Wesley Clover Solutions team worked hand-in-hand with the client s IT professionals to conduct extensive evaluation and testing of the reliability and specialty feature/functionality required in their command center environment. Prior to launching the systems into production, detailed testing was conducted in lab environments to minimize risk and disruption to the business when the systems went live. Migration plans were derived to move the client from the current telephony environment to the new environment, including moving the toll-free numbers and auto ring down circuits. A mix of more than 150 IP Turrets and IP Phones have been implemented and integrated with the company s enterprise voice platform, Cisco Call Manager (via Q.SIG) as well as a variety of unique command and control capabilities that facilitate instant communications with key offices and partners.

7 Global Reinsurer s Capital Markets Group Standardizes on Single IP Communications Platform from Wesley Clover Solutions Profile: A 200-person team of a Connecticut-based capital markets division of a publiclytraded, international reinsurer with more than $17B in assets and serving more than 2,000 customers in 150 markets. This firm needed to address an end of support notice on their trading turret platform and at the same time recognized that their Nortel PBX would also become an issue because of the recent bankruptcy of the manufacturer. Their decision was complicated by the fact that they are a trading and portfolio management subsidiary of a large, international reinsurer that offered many global standard IT platforms that, while solid platforms, were often calibrated for the insurance business and not necessarily a company with capital markets activities. After evaluating platforms from their incumbent suppliers, their head office and Wesley Clover Solutions the decision-makers selected the Voice Communications Platform (VCP) from Wesley Clover Solutions that could replace both their legacy turret and PBX systems with single, IP-based platform that reduced acquisition costs and operational expense over the system lifecycle by approximately 50%. The VCP simplified deployment, ongoing support, growth, business continuity planning and most importantly workflow among trading floor and non-trading floor staff. Wesley Clover Solutions provided an IP voice communications system capable of serving all the needs of all office staff and those on the trading floor in a single, scalable platform. In addition, the system has the potential to integrate into the global four-digit dialing plan of the parent company and be hosted in an off-site data center environment if the need arises. The Wesley Clover Solutions Project Management team worked with the customer to construct a detailed transition plan for all telecommunications services and conducted interviews with all users to determine how each staff member uses the phone, call coverage patterns, special features and functions and mapped these requirements to the programming and training for the new systems. Circuit-testing was conducted prior to system installation to be certain all DID and ARD lines would work as they did on the old systems. By selecting the Wesley Clover Solutions single platform system the customer now has a resilient, advanced IP voice communications platform that cost a fraction of what they would have spent on separate PBX, trading turret and voice recording systems. The VCP offers an array of more than 500 features, functions and applications, can be integrated with various enterprise applications like Microsoft Office Communication Server (OCS)

8 and videoconferencing systems and is scalable to more than 5,000 IP devices in a compact rack-mount system controller.