When our fintech specialist Mike Sparshott bumped into Iyad Yasser, the co-founder and CTO of Ark Technologies at iFX Dubai 2023, neither of them had any idea of the journey that was about to begin.
All Iyad knew was that Ark Technologies needed new server hardware - a powerful, scalable and reliable infrastructure that would prime them for future growth.
Fast forward two years, and Ark Technologies' brokerage customers are seeing a 75% increase in trading activity and a 55% decrease in latency. Now, Iyad is ready to share the full story of how the fintech company partnered with servers.com to find their optimal infrastructure set up.
With over 136,000 users executing more than 2.5 million trades a week, Ark Trader is a leading platform for brokers seeking a one-stop-shop for all their operations.
Launched by Ark Technologies in 2020 as its flagship product, the fintech company is bridging the gap between traders, brokers and third-party providers through a complete brokerage solution. With features such as a built-in CRM, API and margin call screen, Ark Trader creates a hub that connects brokers with every answer they might need. Iyad Yasser, co-founder and CTO of Ark Technologies, summarizes:
"These features are all about making life easier for the broker. Our platform enables you to open client accounts, manage financial operations, and communicate with your liquidity provider or bank with seamless connectivity."
Primarily serving institutional finance customers and retailers based out of the Middle East and Asia, the team at Ark Technologies take pride in their customer support, sitting on top of their already robust Ark Trader product.
"We are available not only on chat or email, but we're also available on WhatsApp 24 hours, six days a week" says Iyad. "If you have a question, there is no need for any formality; just get in touch on our WhatsApp group, and you will get a response in less than a minute according to our Service Level Agreement (SLA)."
Since Ark Technologies' inception, Iyad and his team have striven for only the highest standards in technology. Knowing how important low latency, high uptime and rapid scalability are for trading customers, it is essential to equip Ark Trader with a powerful infrastructure.
But finding the right infrastructure isn't always straightforward. Factors such as region, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and slow support can severely disrupt server operations, and often, are only apparent after onboarding with the provider.
“The direct and personal connection we have with Mike and his team makes us and our customers feel safe.”
“Because many of the local ISPs in the Far East are frequently making network upgrades, we faced connectivity issues during the maintenance hours” explains Iyad. “During these times, most of our clients couldn't connect to Ark Trader. Even during the working week, connection could disappear for up to three hours. For any business, three hours is a very big number, but especially for those providing financial services.”
Issues like these are where trusted and proactive support from an infrastructure provider can make the difference between a customer making a trade or not. Unfortunately for Ark Technologies, their previous provider was not well equipped to deal with such urgent matters. Iyad recalls:
“If there was an issue, we had to wait on a phone line for three to four minutes until someone would answer. And on the weekends, no one would answer. Any maintenance on a weekend, our servers would go down, and we had to wait until Monday morning to hear back - it was a disaster for us.”
This pressed Ark Technologies into finding another provider. A provider who would offer a solution within minutes, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
“By working as an extension of our IT team, servers.com provided the industry knowledge needed to find the best solution. Idea to implementation was only one week.”
“The migration was much smoother than we thought it would be” says Iyad, describing the transition from Ark Technologies' previous provider to servers.com. “From a new data center, we tested eleven small customers over two months on a fresh Ubuntu server, and within the first two weeks, they said they could feel a difference in speed.
“The more customers we migrated to servers.com, the smoother the process became. To be honest, we didn't expect it to be as smooth as it was.”
A big reason for this was the round-the-clock support Ark Technologies found from their dedicated servers.com account team:
“If we face any issue, it's as simple as sending a message, and we will get a quick reply directly from the experts. Even at the weekends, the servers.com support team are always available, and action will be taken within minutes. The direct and personal connection we have with Mike and his team makes us and our customers feel safe.”
It was this level of communication that Ark Technologies found in servers.com, which provided the solution to their regional ISP maintenance challenges. Iyad continues:
“On Mike's suggestion, we implemented a proxy server (an intermediary server stored in a different data center that sits between the customer and server providing their resource) as a redundancy measure. This way, if our main server in Amsterdam is affected by ISP maintenance, the client can connect to a server in Hong Kong via servers.com's global private network, ensuring lower latency and network stability.
“By working as an extension of our IT team, servers.com provided the industry knowledge needed to find the best solution. Idea to implementation was only one week.”
It is one thing to solve an existing problem. But to proactively improve an infrastructure based on an increasing demand is another thing altogether. Luckily, servers.com's expertise was on-hand once again.
“Unexpectedly, some of our clients started rapidly scaling, to the point where our servers would overload. This is when Mike recommended an upgraded line of servers that were perfect for these increasing scaling capabilities.
“Once we migrated our first customer onto the new server, their resource immediately benefitted from enhanced stability. Within days, servers.com were able to deploy brand new servers for more customers, migrating their operations onto upgraded hardware, solving their previous performance limitations.”
The time it takes to make a trade is crucial in getting the best deal possible. Speed, therefore, is a priority. Since migrating to servers.com, the numbers speak for themselves.
“We went from 400ms with Ark Trader version one to 180ms today. Route optimization has also improved speed, reducing network hops from up to 70 to just 9. We haven't modified the backend in any way - this is purely a result of the hardware.
“We could not predict this rate of improvement in speed. To have speeds that are more than twice as fast as our previous servers means our clients are making more trades with more stability.
“For one of our customers who has been operating with the same number of users as they did with our previous provider, their trades have gone from 400,000 a day to 700,000 - a staggering 75% increase.”
“And it doesn't stop at just existing users either” continues Iyad. “Because the forex and online trading exchange sectors are so dependent on trade speed, this increased connectivity has allowed our clients to market these speeds to their prospects and customers, drawing more traders to the platform.”
A 55% boost in execution speed. A 75% increase in trades. It's clear that with the right infrastructure and support in place, a platform like Ark Trader can be elevated to a top-tier brokerage solution that can deliver results even beyond expectation.
“It has been so rewarding - not just for Iyad and his team who have found unquestionable growth with their new infrastructure - but for me as an account manager, knowing that we are moving our customers in the right direction.”
Ark Technologies continues to use its setup of bare metal servers across data centers strategically placed across the globe. Looking ahead, Iyad plans to use the momentum built by servers.com's hardware to expand Ark Trader even further:
“We want to build upon our operations in the Middle East with servers.com. Being based in Jordan, we have access to a few local data centers. However, I am not sure they offer the same level of expertise and reliability that we've experienced with servers.com. Whilst the internet connection in Jordan is very stable, I'm unsure whether these local providers have the depth of experience needed to fully support our fintech solutions.”
As the account manager for Ark Technologies since that first meeting in Cyprus, Mike has been directly involved in transforming their infrastructure to where it is today. Reflecting on this journey, Mike comments:
“It has been so rewarding - not just for Iyad and his team who have found unquestionable growth with their new infrastructure - but for me as an account manager, knowing that we are moving our customers in the right direction. Achieving a 55% improvement in execution speed and a 75% increase in trades is no small feat, and shows just how critical the right infrastructure and dedicated support can be in developing a platform like Ark Trader into a market-leading brokerage solution.”
Thank you to Iyad Yasser for sharing the Ark Technologies x servers.com story. If you're a fintech company wanting to learn more about how servers.com can support your infrastructure, feel free to reach out to Mike directly or contact us here, and we'll be in touch.
