The Challenge

A major investment bank was struggling with their legacy trading platform that had grown organically over 15 years. The system consisted of multiple monolithic applications running on physical servers with manual deployment processes that took 6+ hours and often failed.

Key Pain Points

Operational Challenges

Regulatory Compliance

Business Impact

Our Approach

We implemented a comprehensive platform modernization strategy focused on maintaining business continuity while achieving regulatory compliance.

Phase 1: Assessment and Planning (Month 1-2)

Current State Analysis

Future State Design

Phase 2: Foundation Setup (Month 2-4)

Infrastructure Modernization

Compliance Framework

Phase 3: Application Migration (Month 4-7)

Strangler Fig Pattern Implementation

Trading Engine Modernization

Phase 4: Optimization and Handover (Month 7-8)

Performance Tuning

Team Training and Knowledge Transfer

Technical Architecture

Microservices Design

┌─────────────────┐    ┌─────────────────┐    ┌─────────────────┐
│   Order Service │    │   Risk Service  │    │Settlement Service│
└─────────────────┘    └─────────────────┘    └─────────────────┘
         │                       │                       │
         └───────────────────────┼───────────────────────┘
                                 │
                    ┌─────────────────┐
                    │  Event Bus      │
                    │  (Apache Kafka) │
                    └─────────────────┘

Deployment Pipeline

# Simplified CI/CD pipeline
stages:
  - security_scan
  - unit_tests
  - integration_tests
  - compliance_check
  - staging_deployment
  - regulatory_approval
  - production_deployment
  - post_deployment_verification

Monitoring Stack

Key Technologies Used

Infrastructure

Data Layer

Security

Results Achieved

Performance Improvements

Trade Settlement Time

System Availability

Deployment Frequency

Regulatory Compliance

Audit Readiness

Data Governance

Business Impact

Operational Efficiency

Risk Management

Challenges Overcome

Regulatory Approval Process

Working closely with compliance and risk teams to ensure all changes met regulatory requirements while maintaining system performance.

Zero-Downtime Migration

Implementing sophisticated blue-green deployment strategies to migrate critical trading systems without affecting market operations.

Data Consistency

Ensuring transactional consistency across microservices using event sourcing and saga patterns for distributed transactions.

Performance Requirements

Meeting sub-millisecond latency requirements for high-frequency trading while maintaining system reliability and compliance.

Client Testimonial

“Platformbuilds transformed our entire trading infrastructure while maintaining the highest standards of regulatory compliance. The 75% reduction in settlement time has given us a significant competitive advantage, and the improved system reliability has eliminated the costly outages that were impacting our business. Their expertise in both platform engineering and financial services compliance made this complex project a success.”

— VP of Technology, Major Investment Bank

Lessons Learned

  1. Compliance-First Architecture: Designing compliance into the platform from the beginning rather than retrofitting
  2. Gradual Migration Strategy: Using strangler fig patterns to minimize risk during legacy system migration
  3. Automated Testing: Comprehensive test automation crucial for financial services reliability requirements
  4. Stakeholder Engagement: Regular communication with compliance, risk, and business teams essential for success

Next Steps

Following the successful platform modernization, we continue to work with the client on:

This case study demonstrates how thoughtful platform engineering can drive significant business value while meeting the stringent requirements of regulated industries.

Interested in modernizing your financial services platform? Contact us to discuss how we can help you achieve similar results.