TIPCO

Highly available hosted private cloud for complex treasury tasks in DAX corporations

Publicly listed companies require comprehensive transparency in their financial affairs. To achieve this, treasurers rely on powerful platforms that not only provide an overview of a company’s current financial status but also enable them to anticipate future trends. The Vienna-based company TIPCO offers an efficient financial management platform, one already used by more than 130 companies in Germany and abroad. This is why it relies on OVHcloud’s infrastructure.

To reliably ensure high availability, OVHcloud set up a Private Cloud – as a software-defined datacentre (SDDC) – for TIPCO. In addition to proven fault tolerance, round-the-clock support and lower administrative overhead, the company particularly benefits from the flexibility and scalability of hosting its infrastructure in OVHcloud’s datacentres.

A reliable and scalable cloud infrastructure with predictable pricing

Companies with international operations require a full and clear picture of their finances. This means treasurers need ongoing, rapid access to information on financial status, bank account management, reporting, liquidity planning, risk management, guarantee management, and bank charge management. Companies’ treasury departments benefit from cutting-edge financial management systems, which use intelligent workflows to enhance day-to-day collaboration and minimise email communication. At the same time, deploying the right platforms is helping organisations achieve greater transparency.

Vienna-based FinTech company TIPCO Treasury & Technology combines its team’s corporate and treasury consulting expertise with extensive IT know-how. This has led to the creation of the Treasury Information Platform (TIP), a web-based platform now used by major companies for liquidity planning, financial assessment, risk management, and other key purposes. Overall, more than 130 companies, both within and outside the DAX Index and German-speaking regions, now utilise TIP and its financial management consulting services.

TIPCO requires a reliable and scalable cloud infrastructure to cater to the diverse needs of its clients – including account management, workflow automation, and reporting – by offering a simple and flexible solution. Users have consistently expressed a need for two key things: a datacentre located in Germany and comprehensive certifications. Achieving full GDPR compliance is also considered a non-negotiable requirement, regardless of other factors. Moreover, the FinTech sector places high importance on security and transparent pricing, and previously used internal solutions were unable to meet the high standards expected of them.

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

For TIPCO, OVHcloud set up a Private Cloud, or more precisely, a Software-Defined Datacentre (SDDC). This private infrastructure is fully hosted and managed by the cloud provider, integrating the latest Intel hardware with VMware technology in completely isolated and dedicated environments. TIPCO utilises hosts in two OVHcloud datacentres, one in Limburg an der Lahn, close to the DE-CIX internet exchange, and another in Roubaix, France.

To support the Private Cloud’s long-term growth and scalability, new hosts can be added quickly at any time and removed after peak usage, cutting down on unnecessary costs from idle resources.

The SDDC includes a VMware Enterprise licence and NSX, which offers network capabilities as virtual services within the Private Cloud network. For robust computing power, the new SDDC series (released in 2020) comes equipped with 2nd Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors. Each server features built-in NVMe storage and two Intel® Xeon® Gold CPUs on its dual-CPU board.

To guarantee maximum uptime, one host, designated as a failover ‘node’, is kept on standby with no active workload, ready to take over tasks immediately if other hosts fail. A malfunctioning machine can be replaced without disrupting service, thanks to seamless failover in the Private Cloud. Maintenance and update tasks can be carried out without disrupting cloud instances, through rotational patching and by seamlessly migrating instances to hosts that have already been updated. Running private datacentres within a secure network also ensures robust availability, meaning uninterrupted service for clients.

To handle backups, TIPCO utilises Managed Backup, a backup-as-a-service solution provided by OVHcloud, to secure its VMs. This service, powered by Veeam Backup & Replication, enables simple data recovery in emergencies by triggering automatic backups. As part of its disaster recovery plan, the VMs are also replicated to a server in a French datacentre using Zerto Virtual Replication. This technical solution is based on Virtual Replication Appliances (VRAs) and replicates data by capturing and transferring write operations to storage units.

“We need very high availability as well as excellent scalability. OVHcloud offers these features along with robust security at an affordable cost.”

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

OVHcloud’s Private Cloud service is certified ISO 27001, CSA STAR, and SOC I and SOC II Type 2 . In addition, as a European provider, OVHcloud offers TIPCO services it can always rely on, along with compliance with rigorous security standards and the GDPR. Unlike many other hyperscale providers, OVHcloud’s European datacentres are not subject to the US CLOUD Act or similar legislation that grants non-European government organisations access to corporate data.

This is why, for TIPCO, using two separate datacentres was crucial to maintain high availability. The success of such a strategy hinges on strong connectivity between datacentres. OVHcloud meets this need with its dedicated 20 Tbps fibre-optic network, 31 datacentres, and 34 additional points of presence (PoPs), all designed to handle ever-increasing data volumes. In addition to connectivity engineered for at least double redundancy at every routing point, the entire infrastructure has been optimised for stability, resilience and availability.

Moreover, TIPCO, a cloud expert, provides 24/7 Business Support, ensuring the fastest possible responses to customer questions. Because TIPCO support and OVHcloud datacentre teams work closely together, clients can be informed ahead of time about scheduled maintenance. 

Powerful hardware plus cloud flexibility

The SDDC allows TIPCO to focus entirely on enhancing its treasury platform and serving its clients, without having to operate a datacentre or maintain extra capacity. Clients can always rely on TIPCO to deliver the exact cloud resources they need in the shortest possible time. As more treasurers trust the financial management platform, its infrastructure can expand, keeping pace with the company’s growth. The fault-tolerant and highly available design also minimises the risk of data loss and, by using failover hosts, allows maintenance work and updates to be carried out without impacting live instances.

“At OVHcloud, we can draw on dedicated resources – including our own datacentre – and spin up additional instances at the click of a mouse whenever needed, deploying them in the shortest possible time. Our clients clearly benefit as a result.”

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