TIPCO

Highly available hosted private cloud for complex treasury tasks in DAX-listed companies

Publicly listed companies require comprehensive transparency in financial matters. To this end, treasurers rely on high-performance platforms that not only provide them with an overview of the current state of corporate finances, but also enable them to predict their future development. The Vienna-based company TIPCO has developed an efficient financial management platform that is already being used by more than 130 companies in Germany and other European countries. For the underlying infrastructure, TIPCO has chosen to rely on OVHcloud.

To ensure reliable high availability, OVHcloud has set up a hosted private cloud for TIPCO in the form of a software-defined data centre (SDDC). In addition to tried-and-tested reliability, round-the-clock support and a reduced administrative burden, the company particularly benefits from the flexibility and scalability of the infrastructure in OVHcloud's data centres.

A reliable and scalable cloud infrastructure with predictable prices

Internationally operating corporations require a complete picture of their own financial situation at all times. In other words, treasurers need to be able to get a quick and efficient overview of all issues relating to financial status, bank account management, reporting, liquidity planning, risk management, guarantee management and bank fee analysis at any given moment. Cutting-edge financial management systems support corporate treasury departments through smart workflows that facilitate coordination and thus reduce the number of emails in day-to-day business. At the same time, business groups are also increasing transparency by using these platforms.

The FinTech company TIPCO Treasury & Technology, with headquarters in Vienna, combines the experience of their team of experts in the corporate field and in treasury consulting with comprehensive IT expertise. This combination led to the in-house development of the web-based Treasury Information Platform TIP, which is used by leading corporations as a tool for liquidity planning, financial status, risk management and much more. In total, more than 130 DAX-listed companies across German-speaking countries and beyond now rely on TIP and the company's financial management consulting services.

TIPCO needs a reliable and scalable cloud infrastructure in order to fulfil the diverse requirements of their customers – from account management to the automation of workflows and reporting – with a simple and flexible solution. A data centre location in Germany and comprehensive certifications are among the requirements, which are also repeatedly requested by users. Full GDPR compliance is already considered a prerequisite in any case. At the same time, security and transparent pricing are a high priority in the FinTech environment. Previously used internal solutions were only able to meet their own high standards with great difficulty.

Secure, dedicated and immediately available resources with the best of VMware technology

For TIPCO, OVHcloud has set up a hosted private cloud in the form of a so-called "software-defined data centre" (SDDC). The private infrastructure is fully hosted and managed by the cloud provider and combines the latest Intel hardware with VMware technology in completely isolated and dedicated environments. Within this infrastructure, TIPCO is using hosts in two OVHcloud data centres – in the provider's data centre in Limburg near the German DE-CIX internet node and in Roubaix, France.

To facilitate the long-term development and scaling of the private cloud, additional host servers can be added with minimal delay at any time or removed at the end of peak access times to avoid any costly maintenance of unused resources.

The SDDC includes a VMware Enterprise licence as well as NSX, which provides network functionalities as virtual services in the private cloud network. The new SDDC series launched in 2020 uses 2nd Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors for extensive computing power. All hosts come equipped with built-in NVMe storage and dual CPU boards with two Intel® Xeon® Gold CPUs each.

In order to guarantee maximum availability, at least one host is always kept "empty" as an available node. There are no active processes running on this machine so that it can take over all processes as a failover host without delay in the event of failures on other hosts. This way, a defective machine can be replaced in the background in order to have a new spare failover host available in the private cloud. This approach also allows maintenance and updates to be performed without affecting cloud instances by successively patching all the hosts in turn and seamlessly transferring the instances to the already serviced hosts. Operating one's own data centres in a secure network also ensures a high level of resilience in order to guarantee service continuity for customers.

For backups, TIPCO is using Managed Backup, which OVHcloud offers as a "backup-as-a-service" solution for virtual machines (VMs). This managed backup is based on Veeam Backup & Replication technology and, thanks to an automatic backup function, allows for easy data recovery in the event of an emergency. As part of the disaster recovery plan, the VMs are also replicated at the French server location via Zerto Virtual Replication. With this technical solution, data replication is set up using Virtual Replication Appliances (VRAs), which duplicate and transfer write operations on the storage units.

"We need very high availability as well as very good scalability. OVHcloud combines these qualities while also offering comprehensive security at a reasonable price."

David Lengauer, Head of IT Infrastructure at TIPCO Treasury & Technology GmbH

Moreover, OVHcloud's private cloud offering also meets the requirements of the ISO 27001, CSA STAR, SOC I and II Type 2 certifications. In addition, TIPCO can always rely on OVHcloud as a European provider to apply the strictest security guidelines for its products and guarantee full GDPR compliance. Unlike many other hyperscale providers, OVHcloud's European data centres are not subject to the Cloud Act or comparable regulations that grant non-European government organisations access to company data.

Another important aspect for TIPCO was the use of two different locations to ensure high availability. In order for this approach to succeed, it is essential that the data centres are well connected. OVHcloud achieves this by operating its own dedicated fibre optic network, which – with a total capacity of 20 Tbit/s, 31 data centres and 34 additional points of presence – is designed for the ever-growing data volumes. In addition to at least double redundant connections for each routing point, the entire infrastructure is geared towards optimum stability, redundancy and availability.

Furthermore, a cloud expert provides TIPCO with effective business support around the clock. This ensures that customer questions can be answered as quickly as possible. Thanks to the close cooperation between the support and data centre teams at OVHcloud, customers can also be notified well in advance of upcoming maintenance work, for example. 

Powerful hardware with the flexibility of the cloud

With the SDDC, TIPCO can concentrate fully on the further development of their treasury platform and the needs of their customers without having to operate their own data centre or reserve additional capacity in advance. TIPCO is always able to provide their customers with all the cloud resources they need at short notice. As a result, the infrastructure can grow with the company as more and more treasurers come to rely on the renowned financial management platform. The resilient and highly available design also minimises the risk of data loss and – thanks to the use of failover hosts – allows for maintenance work and updates to be carried out without affecting any cloud instances.

"With OVHcloud, we can use dedicated resources as if they were our own data centre and, if necessary, add further instances with a single click of the mouse and deploy them in no time. This is also a clear advantage for our customers."

David Lengauer, Head of IT Infrastructure at TIPCO Treasury & Technology GmbH