A10 Networks (NYSE: ATEN), a technology leader in application networking, today announced that Travelex Group, the world’s leading foreign exchange (FX) specialist, is using Thunder Series Application Delivery Controllers to power online services and deliver access to mission critical applications across the globe.
Travelex Group is a global FX services provider trading in over 80 currencies, operating across over 50 markets. The group has extensive online capabilities, and over 1,500 stores in many of the world’s major airport hubs as well as on the high street, and provide FX services from over 1,250 ATMs globally. Travelex also offers foreign currency services for partners including banks, supermarkets and travel agencies, extending its reach to over 100 countries and 20,000 locations.
As part of an ongoing strategy to grow its online capabilities and standardise its regional data centres around scalable application delivery architecture, Travelex began evaluating a replacement for its legacy Apache and F5 Networks load balancers. A core requirement was that the new Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) had enough performance to match a growing workload, including SSL offload, while offering the simplicity for remote IT teams to manage effectively. The Travelex IT department undertook an exhaustive selection process before selecting A10 Networks.
“It was clear from the three week proof of concept project we ran with the A10 equipment, that the interface and core features matched our expectations, and the flexibility of both hardware and software versions met our deployment strategy,” says Terry Johnson, security and ecommerce specialist for Travelex. The A10 Networks appliances also “ticked all the boxes” in respect to critical PCI compliance and “…was up to the task in terms of performance,” Johnson added.
A10 Thunder appliances provide access to key Travelex websites and perform a number of tasks including server load balancing, Web Application Firewall, SSL offload and other traffic management duties.
A10 Thunder ADC product line of high-performance, Application Delivery Controllers enable customers’ applications to be highly available, accelerated and secure delivering performance scalability up to 150 Gbps. The A10 Thunder ADC product line is built upon A10’s Advanced Core Operating System (ACOS®) platform, using a Symmetric Scalable Multi-Core Processing (SSMP) software architecture that delivers high performance options for dedicated, hosted or cloud data centres.
“In the financial sector, ‘time means money’. The faster and more reliably a transaction can be performed, the higher the probability of more significant gains. Traders need guaranteed market data response times, with the ability to execute within very short execution windows. A potential 1/30 second delay in receiving market data (or executing a buy order) could prove extremely costly. Managing the performance and service delivery of trading applications increasingly requires an intimate understanding of Financial Information eXchange (FIX), a messaging standard designed for and by the financial securities industry, together with solutions that properly support this highly demanding environment. A10 Networks Thunder ADC’s FIX support offers low latency and low jitter characteristics that are ideal for financial institutions like Travelex,” concludes Glen Ogden, Regional Sales Director for the Middle East region at A10 Networks.
