Avelo

Avelo is a technology company that provides the sophisticated IT interface between financial service providers and their clients. The company is the combination of Screen Business, 1st-The Exchange and N4 Solutions and includes the amalgamation of key system developers. The skills, expertise, technology, industry knowledge and innovation have all been combined to offer huge business management potential for financial businesses across the UK.

Avelo is a software company that provides the sophisticated IT interface between financial service providers and their clients. The company is an amalgamation of a number of key systems developers including Screen Business, 1st-The Exchange and N4 Solutions. The skills, expertise, technology, industry knowledge and innovation have all been combined to offer huge business management potential for financial businesses across the UK.

The sole focus for Avelo is the financial services sector and the solutions connect the entire industry, end-to-end. Clients range from sole trader IFAs and intermediaries to the largest global financial players, including the majority of UK banks and building societies. Core activities include financial planning, wealth management, retirement, protection, mortgages and general insurance in addition to over 150 online web solutions for its membership of financial service providers and IFAs.

Today Avelo connects more than 70 financial service providers with over 32,000 registered intermediary users, their exchange portal handles 12 million quotes and 30,000 electronic new business requests per month and over 50% of the UK's top 100 IFA's, wealth managers and corporate advisers use the solutions. It is estimated that 1 in every four mortgages in the UK are handled through the system.

Hosting problems
Andrew Byham is the Technical Director at Screen Business (the Avelo web development arm). “We encountered some problems about three years ago after hosting our own servers in a co-location set up. We were finding issues with patching and updating and providing the necessary support for a 24-hour business. In addition the incumbent hosting company did not have the ability to provide us with a route for future growth and expansion, as they had limitations on power supply and server housing.”

Core skills in web building not IT hosting
Andy said, “At this point we confirmed that our core skills lay in the development of websites and financial applications and not in IT hosting, so the decision was made to outsource a new managed hosting provider”.
Andy revealed, “We considered four providers and from this selection chose Rackspace® Hosting as our new hosting partner. We had heard good things about the company and I was also aware of Rackspace’s reputation from a previous employment. Having experienced Rackspace managed hosting for a number of years the natural progression for us was to move some of our services to Rackspace Cloud, including some aspects of development, stage a testing.”

Focus on Technology
“The focus for us is on technology, ability and reputation and building a long term relationship,” said Andy, “and this has to be with an experienced professional hosting provider that offers support and technical expertise that is beyond the norm.”

Cloud flexibility
Andy revealed, “Rackspace has proven its worth and we now use our cloud server configuration for all our development, staging and production. It is particularly flexible when building new websites as we can simply build a new server from the image of an existing one, test and decommission as required. The system control panel is very stable and easy to use. We build websites and online tools for our clients, so at least 40% of our cloud hosting is on behalf of individual client sites, while the remainder is for development and staging. We have implemented cloud solutions for backup and firewall and we are planning to use cloud files for our local files too. Rackspace provides all the technical support we need and allows us to operate without an internal IT support team for the hosting package.”

Support is critical
Andy summarised, “Support is absolutely critical to our business and it would very difficult to find fault with Rackspace’s Fanatical Support®. They offer proactive support that puts previous offerings in the shade, and the team is always prepared to go above and beyond the call of duty. This is exactly what a major, online financial services operation needs and we can see the relationship growing and strengthening in the future. I would not hesitate to recommend Rackspace as the perfect business hosting provider.

If you are an IFA or financial services provider looking for a new home or operating base then a visit to Avelo.com will prove to be of significant interest.

If you are looking to invest in a cost-effective hosting solution that can help with future expansion, as well as catering for variations in demand, then a visit to www.rackspace.co.uk will answer a lot of questions. Alternatively call us for a FREE chat about the infinite possibilities on 0800 988 0100.