Mission Critical: Messaging Apps during Covid response

Messaging tools become critical apps for FS

Financial Services companies, and especially the Capital Markets area, have long had a suite of critical tools – payments systems, trading platforms, market data etc.  Now, with the advent of mass home working to address the COVID-19 crisis, a new category of critical apps has emerged – the humble messaging system.

Thesearticles document a massive increase in usage of tools such as Symphony, as banks use them to connect not just internal employees, but as their main way to ‘meet’ customers and partners when personal visits are out.  In many cases, banks will not be able to conduct business if the messaging apps are down, meaning these go right to the top of the critical app list.

ITRS Group spoke with one customer which was already a big user of Symphony before the current crisis.  This bank connects to almost 200 customers and counterparties over Symphony.  Since the Coronavirus crisis it has seen a doubling of daily message volumes on the platform, with a four-fold increase in messages on mobile endpoints.

Thankfully, ITRS Geneos is helping the IT operations team ensure smooth running even under this increased stress.

The bank uses the Geneos-Symphony integration to support IT Operations – relevant Geneos alerts for application or infrastructure issues are automatically posted to specific Symphony chat rooms. This enables automatic comms between various support teams, and prevents unnecessary calls from users to helplines.  In addition, the bank uses Geneos to monitor the continued availability of Symphony, ensuring specific connections and chat rooms are available on a minute-by-minute basis.

If you would like further information on how ITRS Geneos and other ITRS tools can help you secure Symphony (and other critical apps), please contact your account manager, or get in touch here.