Financial Services Solutions: Custom Azure Software

Financial Services

Headquartered in London, I-Finity’s customer provides customised solutions to its international private clients in managing their personal finances. The innovative nature of the customer coupled with in-depth finance services expertise led to the development of their own proprietary software product.

It is imperative that financial data is managed securely and is fully compliant in line with a highly regulated industry. The solution was architected on Microsoft Azure to access the benefits of cloud in providing scale, security and resilience.

Seeking deep technical experts on Microsoft Azure

Over a period of time, our customer had utilised many software development strategies for their technology requirements including freelance developers and outsourcing overseas. These worked for the short term, however the long term needed stability, reliability and a technology partner with specialist skills. The future was finding an agency with proven in-depth Azure knowledge, skills and expertise. This is where I‑Finity started open and transparent conservations with the customer and were able to provide confidence with its Microsoft Partner status and expertise with Azure. The first part of the process was to build on the customer’s trust by validating and confirming the capability within I-Finity. An initial audit and review took place of the existing Azure implementation and the output was a documented report with recommendations.

This was an important first step for both parties, utilising many development models brings multiple development hands with various levels of expertise on Azure. Therefore, it was beneficial to understand the current implementation and create the shared vision of what was needed for the product.

I‑Finity collaborates with its customers by breaking down the technical jargon and focus on what it means to a business and its operations. The audit resulted in creating a short- and long-term development plan. Implementing technology changes that are fundamental in keeping a product operational requires careful planning, change management and robust release and deployment processes.

I-Finity’s in-depth technical knowledge resulted in surfacing improvements for the existing Azure implementation:

• Azure solution had scope for optimisation whilst balancing anticipated demand within budget.
• Azure configuration required enhancing for further resilience, operational efficiencies and comprehensive data backup.
• Azure subscriptions benefited from optimisation for efficiencies without the expense of scale and reliability.

The high-level development scope of work resulted in:

• Reconfiguring the Azure subscriptions to achieve the required scale
• Detailed refinement and reconfiguration by combining, moving and deploying resources for increased optimisation
• Strengthening the Disaster Recovery plan with more comprehensive backups
• Delivering integration with Open Banking and documenting an essential part of the software
• Working through a backlog of bugs and issues collaboratively with the customer
• Implementing requirements as a result of a security audit (Pen Testing performed by a third party)
• Supporting the existing outsourced App developers with delivering on API requirements