Leading Risk Manager Boosts Performance
Learn how a market-leading risk management firm powered its weather analytics platforms with a focus on HPC (high performance computing).
Risk, most analysts will tell you, is a metric. It is not only measurable, but, once pinned down, will open keen insights that can help businesses reinvent themselves, transform, and even grow. If not strategically managed, however, risk can quickly become a disruptive force for the worse.
Even though businesses will have different appetites for risk, their leaders and shareholders will need to intelligently navigate risk varieties of all types to compete in these increasingly uncertain times. The PwC’s Global Risk Survey is an annual report that captures the changing perception of risk. Under the banner of “if we don’t take risks, we don’t progress”, the consulting firm’s annual commentary is nothing else if not a compelling reason why more modern leaders are changing their attitudes toward the broader risk landscape.
But risk is an invisible force if we don’t measure it. At a boardroom level, risk intelligence is as much an artform as it is a science. Imagine designing a business continuity plan without understanding the role of unscripted, natural catastrophes? The global pandemic, in recent memory, was a majorly disruptive event, challenging not only the ways we work, but the stability of our economy. Now apply this to weather forecasting, risk modelling and loss potential, there’s a lot that businesses can learn where risks start to eat into their profitability.
A pioneer in shaping the world’s view of risk, Tectrade’s client plays a substantial role in the risk management space. After the successful delivery of IBM Spectrum Scale (or ESS) deployed as appliances into a complex, high performance computing environment, this leading risk management agency opted for a partnership with Tectrade based on the success of our work on an HPC project with a reputable Formula 1 outfit.
With a complex set of expectations, including precision benchmarking, Tectrade delivered an HPC compatible solution that, ultimately, offered the client highly performant, scalable data storage for its high-end research computing needs.
Reading the Weather (With Data)
Researchers tackle everything from clinical applications to weather forecasting. Our client uses a set of complex resources to read and predict weather patterns. In a risk advisory role, researchers explore how weather forecasting can reveal possible impacts and points of disruption. Cyclones, for example, could touch down across different global geographies and can cause significant disruption, rippling outward and causing upset that can be felt across commercial, property, technology, and other markets.
Analytics may be the cornerstone of risk intelligence, and large volumes of data fuel these kinds of research-intense projects.
Why do weather predictions matter in the realm of business? Climate change and other natural catastrophes can impact everyone, reaching deep into our personal and professional lives. Risk evaluation is the starting point for creating a more resilient world around us.
Research, Analytics & the Importance of Scale
Modern research programmes are demanding. Highly performant, scalable storage solutions are the bedrock of R&D (research and development), especially analytics platforms, where large, and often growing, data sets are crunched. Many research environments are centralised and unified by design. The challenge with data intensive research is how to build the best-fit storage capability that meets the required scalability and performance demands.
Tectrade understands how data analytics platforms have become the lynchpin for high-end, demanding research, whether it feeds into clinical settings, weather modelling, or even professional F1 racing. But data growth is nothing if not a challenge without intelligent storage.
The nature of research is data-demanding, where the real onus is on highly-performant, scalable storage that’s in-concert with a wider HPC setting. But beware, when there’s a low ceiling on data growth, storage without foresight will quickly become a headache in years to come.
At a glance, our client wanted to expand their HPC resources with scalable storage that could meet tight performance guarantees. We helped them achieve their ambitions of offering research users a centralised hub of technologies that can be leveraged for their demanding data needs.
Where we excelled:
- Lifted future bottlenecks around storage capacity with a highly scalable solution;
- Delivered an exacting solution to integrate into a highly-performant, benchmarked HPC stack.
“Where a client needed to leverage HPC technologies to their fullest, deep within a research culture, and where risk intelligence is only as visible as the data in front of you, the role of scalable storage cannot be undermined. There’s also the question of how you layer in security, for remote users from across the world. Our storage solution is deeply and richly integrated.”
– Steve Alcock, Client Director
Performance Guaranteed
Working within the scope of HDR (High Density Rates), Tectrade worked to very precise benchmarks, ensuring performance guarantees, which satisfied the HPC requirement.
IBM Spectrum Scale is an enterprise-grade storage solution that offers end-users superior resiliency, scalability, and control. Based on IBM General Parallel File System (GPFS), Scale storage has been positioned by Tectrade to deliver scalable capacity and performance gains, which aligns ideally with the goal of overseeing demanding analytics and technically intense workloads.
As the engine for this data-rich project, Tectrade factored in 1PB growth increments within the view of futureproofed data growth with superior system scalability. In fact, Storage Scale role-models what scalability, for enterprise-grade workloads, can truly look like, where we supplied 2PB of capacity per two boxes installed. Outside of performance guarantees, our decision to choose Scale as storage infrastructure offered very high availability and reliability.
The outcome offered the client a solution that is not only highly-performant, but one that is strongly resilient and cost-optimised, with no single point of failure.
Breakout Performance with HPC
After 40 years in the technology market, Tectrade has developed a reputation as the go-to transformation partner, helping clients on their IT modernization journeys.
If you are on the market for high-performance computing, have a similar analytics function that requires scalable support, or need friendly, no-obligation advice around secure storage, get in touch today.
About Our Client
For many decades, our client has developed a reputation as a pioneer in risk analytics and management, helping businesses steer through uncertainties and environmental catastrophes. Whether an extreme weather pattern, a natural crisis, or climate change, our client leverages analytics across different geographies to inform views on risks that have the potential to impact the way businesses operate.
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