Customer: ION Markets
Industry: Financial services software
Challenge: Delivering, maintaining and supporting production-critical infrastructure across 50+ global locations
Solution: Global procurement, logistics, stockholding, configuration, maintenance management and professional services from CDW
Impact: Faster infrastructure deployment, simplified global operations, reduced admin burden and trusted support when issues arise
Supporting real-time trading across global markets
ION Markets is part of ION Group, a specialist software company serving the financial services market. Its solutions support client production environments across equities, derivatives and fixed income, enabling large financial institutions to trade across multiple markets around the world.
For ION Markets’ clients, these environments are business-critical. The services provide near real-time access to global trading opportunities, where any failure or delay can create significant risk.
As Steve Hughes, who supports ION Markets’ global data centre, network and technical support teams, explains: “Everything we do is production critical from a client perspective. Faults and failures become critical to our clients’ success or failure.”
With infrastructure spread across more than 50 locations globally, ION Markets needed a partner that could do more than supply hardware. It needed global reach, logistical expertise, responsive support and the ability to simplify a complex international operating model.
One global partner for procurement, logistics and support
ION Markets has worked with CDW for more than a decade, using CDW to support the buying, maintaining and fixing of infrastructure around the world.
At the simplest level, CDW helps ION Markets secure value when purchasing hardware and renewing maintenance contracts. But the partnership goes much further.
CDW supports ION Markets with:
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Global hardware procurement and purchasing power
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Maintenance inventory management and renewal support
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Door-to-door logistics into complex international locations
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Stockholding for faster deployment
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“Gold build” configuration before shipping
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Vendor support management
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Professional services for large-scale projects
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A single global point of contact, supported by regional teams
For ION Markets, CDW’s global reach is critical.
“Very few suppliers have true total global reach. CDW is one of those.” Steve Hughes, ION Markets
Rather than ION Markets having to navigate import requirements, regional tax considerations, customs processes and local delivery challenges, CDW manages the process end to end.
“We look for it to be delivered to our data centre where we can just effectively take the package.”
Faster deployment through stockholding and pre-configuration
Speed is essential in financial services. ION Markets often faces demanding client timelines when deploying or refreshing infrastructure.
To support this, CDW stockholds equipment for ION Markets, allowing the business to draw down against pre-purchased servers when needed. CDW can also configure equipment before shipping, applying ION Markets’ required build standards so local smart hands teams can simply unpack, connect and activate the hardware.
“CDW can typically turn them around and have them most anywhere in the world within five days. For us, that is a significant benefit.”
This helps ION Markets reduce infrastructure lead times and accelerate its ability to support new services in global markets.
While delivering a full new service may still take months due to the complexity of ION Markets’ environments, CDW helps remove weeks from the infrastructure element of that process.
Simplifying global maintenance and support
ION Markets runs thousands of pieces of infrastructure across multiple continents. Managing warranties, renewals, support levels and vendor escalations manually would create a significant operational burden.
CDW helps simplify this by consolidating maintenance processes and co-terming renewals, giving ION Markets a clear annual view of what needs to be renewed, replaced or decommissioned.
“We don’t have to every month look at what’s coming up, what’s about to expire, what do we need to do. We can rely on the fact that the list is one we can work off, and it’s once and done.”
That simplicity matters because ION Markets wants its engineering teams focused on engineering, not administration.
“Most of our teams are engineers. Engineers tend to be expensive resources. I don’t want my engineers doing admin work. A lot of what CDW allows us to do is minimise the administrative effort in maintaining the environment.”
Global scale with a personal touch
One of the most important aspects of the CDW relationship is the balance between global capability and personal service.
ION Markets benefits from CDW’s scale, buying power and international reach, while still receiving a responsive, flexible service through a trusted account team.
“It is easy to forget how big CDW are as a company now. They still are able to provide a much more flexible service than a company of their size is normally able to do.”
That flexibility becomes especially valuable when something goes wrong. Steve describes CDW as a partner that helps when plans change, hardware fails or urgent support is needed.
“It’s not about when it’s going well. It’s about when something’s going badly and how easy is it to fix. They make that process almost painless.”
On several occasions, CDW has helped ION Markets recover difficult situations quickly, escalating with vendors and sourcing critical components when timelines were tight.
“When things don’t go to plan, you work out how good your partners are.”
Invisible efficiency, reduced risk and confidence at scale
For ION Markets, CDW’s value lies in making a complex global infrastructure operation feel simple.
Whether ION Markets needs equipment in Hong Kong, Brazil or another complex location, CDW helps normalise the logistical challenge and provide a clear route to delivery.
“It simplifies and normalises a difficult logistical problem.”
The result is a partnership that gives ION Markets confidence, reduces operational friction and frees internal teams to focus on higher-value work.
When asked what ION Markets would miss most if CDW disappeared tomorrow, Steve’s answer was simple: “A good night’s sleep.”
He adds: “The quality we receive is almost invisible to the process. We get the goods when we’re told we’re going to get them, where we’re told we’re going to get them. Therefore, I don’t have to worry about it.”
