Organizations have not fully committed to voice over IP (VoIP), but more than half (54%) of trading organizations plan to implement fully converged VoIP in the trading room in the next three years, according to a survey by BT and Finextra on business continuity and IP readiness in the trading room.
“The survey demonstrates that despite the potential of VoIP, trading organisations have yet to capitalise on its benefits,” said Elton Cane, author of the report. “Today’s robust VoIP technology overcomes the issues of reliability and latency associated with early experiences of this technology. By taking a fully converged approach to VoIP, organisations will be able to realise benefits such as IP re-routing for business continuity purposes.”
The respondents did find that the main business requirements driving this change include business continuity planning (BCP), greater operational efficiency, compliance with industry regulations and cost effective provision of services to remote users.
The survey found that 58% of respondents rely on separate local trading systems and/or non-local operations to cover their positions in the event of a disaster; 42% of organizations rely on trading positions with a third party provider, and this is set to rise slightly in the next year as 12% of organisations look to outsource BCP support. Also, 39% have distributed trading systems across the main site and alternative facilities and a further 27% plan to adopt this approach to BCP within the next two years; 29% of the organisations surveyed are already capable of allowing traders to trade and be voice recorded from their homes or other remote locations in the event of disruptive incidents or denial of access to the main trading building. And of the organisations that don’t yet have this ability 54% are actively considering it.
“The survey shows that the majority of firms recognise the value of migrating to VoIP, both in terms of business continuity planning and operational efficiency. Interestingly, most would like to take a phased approach to implementing VoIP on the trading floor rather than take the risk of removing legacy networks and systems in a big bang approach,” said Rod MacDonald, managing director, BT Trading Systems, Global Financial Services.