AxiomSL.

The Challenge.

AxiomSL recognised that, with the European Banking Authority (EBA) issuing guidance for the use of public cloud services, there would be a strong demand from their customers to purchase their solution as a Software as a Service offering, as opposed to an on-premises software product. While this would bring their customers the typical benefits of SaaS products, it also allowed their customers to offload the technology burden of regulatory compliance to AxiomSL, saving yet more time and money.

Modelling the opportunity with Nordcloud highlighted that profit margins could be increased if manual operations were eliminated by fully automating the deployment and operational management of their SaaS offering. In addition, automation would help to demonstrate that their SaaS product was meeting cloud operations guidelines set out by the EBA, and other regulators such as the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).

The Solution.

Nordcloud was instrumental in guiding AxiomSL though the process of transforming their software into a SaaS product. To ensure that regulatory guidelines were the foundations of the SaaS product, Nordcloud assisted AxiomSL to define their cloud governance, security and support model though a series of cloud enablement workshops. These ensured that key items such as security controls, regulatory guidelines, core infrastructure, support model and cost management standards were reviewed, discussed and clearly defined and documented for all AxiomSL AWS deployments.

Taking into account the regulatory guidelines and the AxiomSL Cloud Governance Model, Nordcloud, working closely with AxiomSL, fully automated the deployment and operations of their software. This ensured they could quickly and effectively deploy and manage the SaaS product into any AWS region, saving days over a typical manual installation.

During the automation phase of the project, Nordcloud advised AxiomSL on changes that should be incorporated into the product to allow them to increase the use of AWS technologies to increase the availability of the platform, increase performance, decrease the RPO/RTOs and further automate the configuration of their platform.

Nordcloud also assists AxiomSL with their financial operations and ongoing management of AWS account via the resale of AWS Capacity. Nordcloud’s billing concierge helps reduce the TCO of operating in AWS by actively managing their AWS spend and helping with cost allocation, reducing the operational overhead for the AxiomSL team.

The Results.

Through Nordcloud’s work with AxiomSL, the business has created a new line of revenue, providing their customers with their products as a Software as a Service solution. This represents a considerable reduction in TCO for their customers, compared to running on premise, especially when you factor in the fact that the platform meets regulatory & cloud compliance guidelines laid down by the EBA and MAS Technology Risk Management (TRM). The reference architectures which were created by Nordcloud meet ISO27001 & CIS guidelines and allowed for the end to end automation of the deployment in any AWS region with the same infrastructure as code (IaC) templates.

To ensure that changes in the IaC templates remain compliant Nordcloud developed a continuous assessment framework which ensured code quality, operational KPIs, audit trails were correctly configured, recovery point and time objectives had been considered and the information security policy was complied with.

As a result the AxiomSL platform can be deployed and ready for customers within hours of the orders being placed. The operational automation reduces the overhead of the ongoing operations, and ensures that software, platform, security or regulatory changes can quickly be rolled out to the entire client base. In addition, a portion of the Business Continuity Plan was automated ensuring that recovering from any failures could be carried out accurately, repeatedly and rapidly.

Nordcloud continues to provide AxiomSL support with AWS account provisioning and financial operations. AWS Accounts are provided pre-configured, ready for their automation tooling to begin deploying into. Nordcloud conducts regular cost optimisation reviews and helps reduce internal administration by presenting invoices in methods that allow costs to be easily allocated internally.

About the Company.

AxiomSL combines deep industry expertise with a data lifecycle management platform to deliver regulatory reporting, liquidity, capital, credit, tax and operations analytics. AxiomSL’s global footprint spans 74 regulators across 56 jurisdictions, serving financial institutions with more than $31 trillion in total assets.

More information on AxiomSL’ cloud-based SaaS product can be found here.