BSI feature in CIO for Artificial Intelligence

"For commercial banks, investment firms and insurance companies, investment can be driven by intense competition to make smarter, faster decisions that reduce risks and increase rewards. Financial Services organizations have long used high-performance computing (HPC) to gather and process their deep wealth of data.

As HPC becomes more pervasive and innovation becomes more critical, many Financial Services Institutions (FSIs) and various organisations are using this technology to fuel artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) for deep, fast and intelligent data analytics, that can give them an extra edge. These companies are embracing AI across a broad range of financial decisions — from quantitative research to risk analysis and fraud detection."

Well established heritage in High Performance Compute (HPC)

"Since the mid-1980s, Business Systems International (BSI) has been a market leader in creating IT solutions for financial markets, including HPC, networking and storage systems. The London-based company subsequently brought these skillsets into other sectors, including retail, healthcare, research, automotive and media, and now provides IT solutions to organizations around the world. Today, BSI’s top customers include global hedge funds and other firms focused on high-frequency and algorithmic financial trading. The success of these firms hinges on artificial intelligence applications driven by lightning-fast HPC systems, according to Daniel Goodman, Director at Business Systems International.

These firms are looking to discover trading ideas and trading solutions,” Goodman says. They are running simulations and using AI to test their ideas. For these efforts, they will develop algorithms and use AI-driven simulations to forecast market movements. To stay at the leading edge of the financial trading industry, these firms need the support of technology partners who understand AI and other data-driven applications, along with the HPC infrastructure that powers the workloads. This is where BSI enters the picture.

"Our customers need a partner who understands AI and every constituent part in order to deploy a successful solution". Daniel Goodman says. "This is not the kind of market where you can simply go shopping for parts from different suppliers and then try and do it all yourself. It is a multidisciplinary area." "To deliver its highly customised solutions, BSI works very closely with its customers to understand their applications and the applicable current and emerging computing technologies. They know how their code works. The difficulty that they have is making that code work in the most efficient possible way. While other partners are good at selling hardware, they don't really understand the underlying technology and how to deliver a complete, end-to-end solution in a trouble-free manner."

"Typically, customer deployments start on a small scale and then grow rapidly into something that is quite massive from there. Some of these solutions are probably equivalent in path to the top 50 supercomputers in the world. Additionally, these deployments have been in places like the Nordics, so as to benefit from the low-cost, sustainable power options."

BSI works closely with Dell Technologies on the development and deployment of many customer solutions. BSI has been recognized as the Dell Technologies partner of the year in the UK, the Dell Technologies OEM Partner of the Year for EMEA and is a winner of the Dell Technologies President’s Circle global award.

"We work very well with Dell Technologies and are a very natural fit. Dell has some of the best and most reliable technology, and they are very quick at delivering that technology. That is key in this market. Other manufacturers might take three months to manufacture something that Dell can produce in 10 days."

In addition to providing innovative IT infrastructure, Dell Technologies assists BSI with deploying and maintaining solutions, letting BSI take the lead and coordinate the work of the Dell technicians and engineers. We front all of the maintenance contracts, so our customers see it through a single pane of glass Goodman says. We make it a lot easier for them. Different customers have different requirements, but we will do everything for them, from supplying the equipment to racking it, cabling it and maintaining it over time.