Cheung Kong-owned online trading platform iMarkets will standardise its traffic management with tools from F5 Networks.
The Big-IP (Internet Protocol) Enterprise system has been undergoing testing at iMarkets since November, and is intended to enhance the stability of its structured investment products system.
F5 had worked with iMarkets, an electronic marketplace for institutional investors and financial institutions, for eight months before its launch last November.
Country manager for Hong Kong Francis Ng Ka-fai said: 'The iMarkets platform had to deliver exemplary levels of stability and reliability which never allows any network failure or delay.'
The iMarkets platform operates through a virtual private network and consists of three main systems - load balancing and client management, Web servers and Oracle databases.
More than 30 parties, including stockbrokers, investment houses and private banks, have been participating in the online platform.
F5's solution - Big-IP Enterprise controller, enables real-time monitoring of the servers and network, while routing incoming queries to the best responding server. 'It provides load balancing and allocates transactions to different servers. Besides, it offers a health check on the servers so transactions can be transferred to those in good status,' Mr Ng said.
