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archr1 Firefly Upscaler 2x scale

Customer Story

Archr: London’s premier rates-focused brokers

How Vivid Adapt partnered with independent, rates-focused broker Archr to eradicate legacy IT infrastructure, fortify regulatory cyber security, and deliver an agile, cloud-ready ecosystem driven by direct access to technical expertise.

Founded on the core principles of collaborative thinking and united operations, Archr offers a unique, independent approach to rates-focused broking, standing in stark contrast to the siloed, rigid models of the wider financial industry.

Operating from strategic financial hubs in London and Dubai, the Archr team averages over 20 years of direct market experience per broker. The firm brings deep, specialised expertise in outright futures, options volatility, and exchange-traded interest rates and bonds. By combining this vast, pooled industry knowledge with industry-leading trading technology, Archr provides superior “best execution” for institutional portfolios managed by top-tier banks, asset managers, and global hedge funds.

In the high-stakes financial sector, Archr’s ability to identify transient market trends and deliver timely, accurate, high-conviction trade ideas is directly tied to the speed, security, and resilience of their underlying IT infrastructure. In an arena where algorithmic precision and rapid information transmission dictate success, any technological friction or latency poses an immediate risk to their commercial valuation and the trust of their institutional clients.

archr2

Cutting-edge financial services powered by Agile IT Operations

Summary

  • Replaced a slow-responding MSP with Vivid Adapt’s direct-to-engineer support model, ensuring instantaneous technical resolution for time-critical, high-stakes trading operations.
  • Executed a comprehensive IT reorganisation that eliminated physical data centre colocation dependencies, shrinking the legacy hardware footprint by a factor of five.
  • Proactively streamlined operations by decommissioning obsolete communications and legacy servers, serving as a vital transformational step in preparation for a resilient migration to Microsoft Azure.
  • Reinvested capital freed from outdated technologies into an advanced IT security posture, ensuring strict adherence to financial regulations and achieving operational readiness for Cyber Essentials Plus and ISO27001 certifications.

The Challenge

For an engineering firm operating at the forefront of naval architecture, proprietary blueprints and fluid dynamics schematics represent the company’s entire commercial valuation. The protection of this Intellectual Property (IP) is paramount. GT Wings required a highly secure, frictionless ecosystem where their global workforce could collaborate remotely without jeopardising sensitive data.

Simultaneously, perfecting the aerodynamic efficiency of the AirWing™ requires vast,
computationally intensive simulations. GT Wings initially relied on Google Cloud for these HighPerformance Compute requirements. However, as their simulation demands scaled, they encountered a common hyperscaler dilemma: unpredictable, escalating monthly expenditures that strained pragmatic IT budgets, coupled with compute performance that failed to align with their aggressive commercial development timelines.

The Solution

Recognising the high-velocity demands of the financial sector, Vivid Adapt transformed Archr’s support model by providing trading desks with immediate, direct access to senior engineers, entirely bypassing traditional helpdesk delays. Concurrently, Vivid Adapt spearheaded an aggressive optimisation of Archr’s bloated legacy systems. By decommissioning redundant hardware and obsolete communications equipment, they shrank the overarching IT footprint by more than five times and completely eliminated Archr’s reliance on physical data centre colocation.

This drastic infrastructure reduction served as a proactive step, perfectly positioning Archr for an efficient, secure, and scalable migration to Microsoft Azure. Crucially, the budget freed from maintaining outdated physical assets was strategically reallocated to dramatically enhance Archr’s IT security posture. By shifting financial resources toward fortifying a modern digital perimeter, Vivid Adapt ensured strict compliance with financial regulations and established a robust framework ready for Cyber Essentials Plus and ISO27001 certifications.

“We view Vivid Adapt as a strategic partner rather than just an IT vendor. Their speed of delivery and service quality are top‑notch, and the collaborative approach with our leadership is what sets them apart. They understand our operations and proactively offer solutions that improve our business efficiency.”

James Fay, Founding Partner

Archr is a fully independent, rates-focused broker delivering bespoke trade execution, multi-leg strategies, and high-conviction market intelligence to institutional clients globally.


What we did

Fully Managed IT Multi-geo Azure Cyber Essentials Plus

Industry

Customer stories

“As a financial services firm, system reliability and cost control are fundamental to our operations. Before working with Vivid Adapt, our IT approach was largely reactive, with inconsistent costs and limited visibility into long-term planning. Since partnering with them, we’ve adopted a more strategic and proactive model that has brought stability to our IT environment, reduced operational risk, and delivered much greater predictability over spend – helping us avoid the kinds of disruptions that can carry serious financial and reputational consequences in our sector. Vivid Adapt has also strengthened our internal capabilities by streamlining our Azure infrastructure, enhancing our network and security posture, and providing continuous support alongside advanced threat management. Their input goes well beyond day-to-day support; they actively help us make better-informed decisions around performance, security, and cost efficiency. What truly sets them apart is their responsiveness and depth of expertise – direct access to senior engineers from the outset, combined with their ability to deliver quickly and effectively, makes them a trusted extension of our team.”

Alex Viktorov, IT Director

“Before we partnered with Vivid Adapt, IT was always a difficult challenge – something we only dealt with when it broke. As we began to scale, the lack of a strategic roadmap became a major liability. Vivid Adapt didn't just fix our immediate issues; they provided the long-term vision we needed to modernise our infrastructure and cyber security requirements via Cyber Essentials. Since they took over, our team's productivity at System Hygienics has soared, and I no longer worry about whether our systems can handle our next phase of growth. Vivid Adapt's strategic advisory and cost-optimised approach to IT has become a critical part of our leadership team's decision making.”

Mark Poultney, Owner & Managing Director

“We engaged Vivid Adapt to extend our internal know‑how, and the quality of service has been exceptional. They simplified our MDR security operations and integrations, giving us round‑the‑clock peace of mind. Beyond day‑to‑day support and Veeam backup engineering and management, their expert guidance was instrumental in helping us secure our Cyber Essentials Plus accreditation. I highly recommend them for their speed of delivery and technical expertise, and you won’t find their approach to IT service management anywhere else with access to high‑level engineers from the first call.”

Karl Proctor, IT Manager

“We engaged Vivid Adapt to extend our internal technical capabilities, and the quality of service has been exceptional. They conducted a security audit of our Microsoft 365 environment and established a continuous Managed Service Agreement for our network equipment, providing us with consistent reliability and peace of mind. Their team was instrumental in reorganising and reimplementing our on‑site infrastructure and backup systems, ensuring our operations are now both secure and resilient. I highly recommend them for their speed of delivery and technical expertise — their approach to IT service management is unique, providing direct access to high‑level engineers from the very first call.”

Myles Kingsnorth, IT Manager

“We view Vivid Adapt as a strategic partner rather than just an IT vendor. Their speed of delivery and service quality are top‑notch, and the collaborative approach with our leadership is what sets them apart. They understand our operations and proactively offer solutions that improve our business efficiency.”

James Fay, Founding Partner

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