Nutanix (NASDAQ: NTNX), a leader in enterprise cloud computing, announced that investment management firm JM Finn selected Nutanix to deliver a private cloud infrastructure that is secure, flexible and reliable to nimbly support changing business needs. The JM Finn IT infrastructure was recently put to the test when the company needed to support remote working for all employees in response to COVID-19 - all in about a week.

As many companies focus on how to best maintain business continuity during this difficult time, organiwations in highly regulated industries, like financial institutions, struggle with enabling remote work securely while ensuring compliance. In fact prior to COVID-19 only 5% of all workers completely worked from home. The ability to work remotely in the financial services industry has always been heavily dependent on security and safeguarding access to customers’ financial information.

At JM Finn, most employees, especially “power users,” like dealers and traders requiring high-performance machines, did not work remotely. However, the team had recently undergone an IT modernisation initiative, leveraging Nutanix’s HCI platform to power their private cloud, with a focus on virtualisation and software-defined solutions. This enabled them to easily deliver a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) to all essential employees, including power users.

“Our infrastructure was already completely virtualised which made a big difference in enabling remote work,” said Jon Cosson, Head of IT and Chief Information Security Officer at JM Finn. “Having the right infrastructure in place is extremely important and it is evident that many financial firms have not prioritized this. Our Nutanix private cloud infrastructure, which powers all of our workloads including VDI, played an integral part in keeping our employees safe and productive while working remotely.”

One of the biggest challenges for any financial company looking to set up a remote environment is how to serve power users. This can be incredibly complex as they require powerful machines with zero tolerance for lag or downtime, a lot of storage and memory, and four to eight monitors. Many firms are not able to allow these power users to work remotely, but the team at JM Finn is now entirely set up to work from home without sacrificing performance or security thanks to some key tools.

Ensuring the firm was fully compliant with regulatory requirements was another concern for the JM Finn IT team. Many cloud solutions, which companies are leveraging to quickly deliver remote work platforms, do not ensure regulatory compliance. With their Nutanix private cloud infrastructure, the JM Finn team can help ensure all necessary data and information is stored locally and securely. With an eye on security, the team also strengthened two-factor authentication and built a conference call system.

“Thanks to their Nutanix-powered private cloud, the JM Finn team is now set up to work remotely with full confidence that it is in a secure environment,” said Dom Poloniecki, General Manager, Sales, Western Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa, Nutanix. “Having the right infrastructure in place, as well as a software-defined solution that can easily adapt to changing business needs, allowed them to quickly respond to the current crisis to ensure the business could continue delivering to its customers.”

Preparing for the unexpected allowed JM Finn to quickly and nimbly respond to COVID-19 without causing business disruptions. Leveraging a software-defined private cloud infrastructure, they were able to quickly deliver remote work to their employees securely and in record time.