AKAMAI INDUSTRY FEATURE SHEET
Online Brokerage
Faster Speed and High Availability Drive Revenue
The Akamai Difference for Online Brokerage
• Designed to improve speed and availability for brokerage transactions – critical to retaining active
traders and grow revenue
• Delivers high performance for trading, research, account opening, and customer service,
by routing traffic around Internet bottlenecks
• Helps protect customer data by integrating with existing security infrastructure
• Reduces downtime by defending against web and denial-of-service attacks
• Helps brokers address rapid growth in web and mobile traffic, without the expense
of new infrastructure
Online Brokerage Users Demand High Performance and Availability
Studies show that investors and active traders are more likely to care about site fundamentals than
new feature bells and whistles. Online brokerage users expect their brokerage site to be always
available, quotes to be delivered in real time, and trades to execute instantly. If their broker isn’t
able to meet these requirements, they’ll trade on a different account, switch to the call center, and
stop recommending their broker to others. According to user research by Forrester, 59% of online
8 of the top 10 U.S. online brokers
depend on Akamai.
Financial firms transact more than $1
trillion in via Akamai annually
6 of the top 10 world stock exchanges
employ Akamai
85% of the world’s Internet users
are within one hop (milliseconds) of
Akamai’s globally distributed platform
Worldwide, no one carries more
Internet traffic than Akamai
brokerage customers have had a dissatisfying experience online, and speed and availability account
for 52% of those dissatisfying experiences.
Representative Akamai Financial
Services Customers
By The Numbers: Performance and Online Brokerage Users
29%
Online users who encounter performance problems in the
research process and opt to go to a competitor’s website
56%
Online banking and broker customers who expect pages
to download in two seconds or less.
55%
Power users of online brokerage sites stating that the impact
of poor w eb performance is enough for them to decrease their
willingness to recommend a particular firm
54%
Online broker customers who would move to higher cost
offline channels to trade investments if the website was
unavailable or slow to respond.
Data source: The Impact Of Poor Website Performance In Financial Services,
a research survey conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Akamai
Technologies January 15, 2011
AKAMAI INDUSTRY FEATURE SHEET
Online Brokerage
How Akamai Addresses Core Performance Issues
To improve performance, brokerage firms have invested in state-of-the-art
Easy – Forex Maximizes Performance in a Market with Three
Trillion in Daily Trades
application infrastructure for online trading. However, physical distance,
Easy-Forex delivers online foreign exchange trading in more than 150
inefficient protocols, Internet congestion, and poor routing on the public
countries on a platform that operates in 10 different languages. With
Internet can still add seconds – leading to unacceptable transaction
currency exchange rates changing at intervals of seconds, peerless
performance. The Akamai Intelligent Platform™ overcomes these issues by
performance is essential. As Uri Strauss, Head of Operations at Easy-Forex,
putting 85% of all global web users just one Internet node (milliseconds)
explains: “The consistent delivery of dynamic data to ensure users can trade
away from performance optimization.
at the best possible price, and the immediate execution of these trades, are
BanifInvest Leverages Akamai for a 40% Acceleration of
Online Brokerage Services
both key. Any slippage has a direct impact on quote-totrade ratios, revenue,
BanifInvest is the most advanced retail brokerage company in the rapidly
and user retention.
” The company faces a number of challenges, including slow response due
growing Brazilian market and is part of Banif Group, which employs 6,000
to public Internet congestion in Australia, the Middle East and China. It also
people in 17 countries. To drive customer acquisition and satisfaction,
needs to maintain availability and performance to capitalize on periods of
BanifInvest’s online brokerage must provide quick delivery of dynamic
high trading volume. The incorporation of innovative visual trading tools and
content and fast transactions. Brokerage users expect both a rapid sign-up
rich content, has made the need to address latency and bandwidth issues an
process and fast access to applications that respond without fail.
even greater priority.
BanifInvest experienced a 40 percent improvement in site speed once it
Easy-Forex employed the globally distributed, highly scalable Akamai
started using Akamai. Customers were able to buy and sell shares and
Intelligent Platform™ for route optimization and to gain scalability.
obtain market information much faster. Akamai’s solution integrated
Partnering with Akamai enabled Easy-Forex to achieve high performance
with BanifInvest’s infrastructure to deliver a secure experience, including
levels using a centralized infrastructure without making new capital
mandatory encryption for all transactions. “We are very confident with the
investments. Easy-Forex achieved better quote-to-trade ratios and the
solution, which will become a BanifInvest competitive advantage from now
ability to absorb spikes in traffic volume, as well as security against
on. We hope to grow between 40% and 60% with the improvements,”
denial-of-service attacks.
said Everson Ramos, BanifInvest’s IT Superintendent. BanifInvest plans to
leverage joint support from Akamai, and its local partner, Exceda, to pursue
continued online improvements.
“Using Akamai’s service boosted application delivery performance by 50%. What’s more, we gained the
capacity to scale on-demand – even during extreme trading peaks. As a result, we’ve been able
to support the increase in FX trading volumes precipitated by the recent global economic crisis.”
– Uri Strauss, Head of Operations, Easy-Forex
AKAMAI INDUSTRY FEATURE SHEET
Online Brokerage
Capturing Business from Independent Financial Advisors with
High Performance Mobile Applications
A recent IDC study indicates that worldwide shipments of smartphones will
reach more than 900 million units by 2015. According to Forrester Research’s
2011 study, 11% of U.S. online adults with investment accounts say they are
mobile investors, and 27% of mobile investors are also mobile traders who
bought or sold stocks, bonds, mutual funds, or ETFs. Online brokerage firms
that are prepared to meet mobile users’ needs for ondemand services have a
tangible opportunity to take market share as traditional channels decline in
importance.
Another Akamai customer, a recognized leader in customer service
quality, has paid special attention to delivering mobile investing services
by supporting Apple®, Android™, Windows® Phone 7 and BlackBerry®
devices. While the majority of the firm’s customers are based in the U.S.,
the firm is committed to meeting their customers’ needs as they travel
across the globe. The brokerage division employed the Akamai Intelligent
Platform™ to ensure worldwide performance and security from the
firm’s centralized U.S. infrastructure – without the expense of regional
or international data centers. Akamai’s platform, highly distributed across
the globe, and “anytime, anywhere” support is designed to ensure faster
performance through route optimization.
A leading brokerage firm has turned the challenge of dealing with the
four major mobile operating systems into a competitive advantage. It has
used Akamai’s Mobile Detect and Redirect service to welcome (and delight)
users with smart choices before the person even lands at the brokerage site.
Users accessing the site from a mobile device are sent straight to the mobile
web, unless they are using a high bandwidth connection, in which case
they are offered an opportunity to download the application specific
to their device.
Akamai’s distributed platform improves performance from coast to coast
Akamai
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Average Response Time Seconds
Origin
The above graph shows how the time to conduct a three-step process for an investment advisor is decreased
across the U.S. – providing advisors on the East Coast with a comparable experience to those on the West Coast.
AKAMAI INDUSTRY FEATURE SHEET
Online Brokerage
Protection from Future “Flash Crash” Sized Market Events
What market conditions and activities created the May 6 event? There is stil
On May 6, 2010 at 2:45 PM, the Dow Jones tumbled 650 points in 30
some uncertainty about the causes and how to address the underlying issues.
minutes, wiping $850 billion off share prices, before partially rebounding.
As a result, a repeat of the flash crash seems quite possible. However, one
During this event, Akamai observed a large spike in traffic for our brokerage
thing Akamai’s brokerage firm clients do know is that, because of the scale
customers, with some sites reaching 10 times their normal daily peak. The
of Akamai’s platform, they are already well prepared for a comparable spike
good news for Akamai’s clients is that over 80% of all bandwidth and over
in website volume.
95% of all hits were served by Akamai during this critical time. While the
May 6, 2010 flash crash was the largest web volume spike ever observed
in the brokerage industry, it was still less than 1% of the normal daily volume
of https traffic delivered by Akamai. The brokerage industry’s giant flashcrash induced web volume spike was barely a blip on Akamai’s network.
Akamai’s distributed platform insulates online trading systems from the effects of market events
Akamai Response
Total Bandwidth
Origin Response
1,200
May 6 Flash Crash
Bandwidth [Mbps]
1,000
800
600
400
200
0
Sunday
May 2
Monday
May 3
Tuesday
May 4
Wednesday
May 5
Thrusday
May 6
Friday
May 7
The above graph shows the traffic volume of Akamai’s brokerage customers the week of the 2010 “Flash Crash.”
While peak traffic during the crash nearly doubled, 80% of bandwidth and 95% of hits were served by the Akamai
platform, leaving origin load nearly flat and availability unchanged.
As the global leader in Content Delivery Network (CDN) services, Akamai makes the Internet fast, reliable and secure for its customers. The company’s advanced web performance,
mobile performance, cloud security and media delivery solutions are revolutionizing how businesses optimize consumer, enterprise and entertainment experiences for any device,
anywhere. To learn how Akamai solutions and its team of Internet experts are helping businesses move faster forward, please visit www.akamai.com or blogs.akamai.com,
and follow @Akamai on Twitter.
Akamai is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the United States with operations in more than 40 offices around the world. Our services and renowned customer care
enable businesses to provide an unparalleled Internet experience for their customers worldwide. Addresses, phone numbers and contact information for all locations are listed on
www.akamai.com/locations.
©2015 Akamai Technologies, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission is prohibited. Akamai and the Akamai wave logo are registered
trademarks. Other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners. Akamai believes that the information in this publication is accurate as of its publication date; such information is subject
to change without notice. Published 05/15.