Lupus Alpha Selects Interxion to Support Critical Applications

Frankfurt-based asset manager Lupus alpha is working with data centre service provider Interxion to optimise its critical IT applications and ensure low-latency connectivity for its institutional and retail investment strategies.

Lupus alpha looked at four independent data centre options and a handful of shared data centres owned and operated by German banks before choosing Interxion’s Frankfurt data centre to support its own set-up. The company runs most of its applications in house, but latency-critical applications, such as high-frequency trading and portfolio management, are also hosted on a redundant basis at the Interxion site, which went live in April 2010.

Matthias Biedenkapp, founding partner and managing director of Lupus alpha, says the company selected Interxion for its local proximity in Frankfurt and technical infrastructure. Interxion also offered the choice of over 150 carriers that support cost-effective, high-performance access to exchanges and market data providers including Bloomberg, Morningstar and FactSet. Lupus alpha also expects to benefit from a growing financial services community at Interxion.

Lupus alpha currently has four racks at the Interxion site, but Biedenkapp points out that the data centre has space to accommodate the asset manager’s expansion for at least the next 10 years.

In case of performance problems with in-house applications, Lupus alpha can load-balance between its own data centre and the Interxion data centre. The Interxion centre also acts as a second live data centre, ensuring redundancy for all data and transactions.

Its former back-up data centre was within a shared bank facility, but the facility lacked space for expansion, leading Lupus alpha to end its contract with the bank and move its work to Interxion.

“Interxion offers us guaranteed, high-performance IT infrastructure and a second data centre in case we have problems. The user doesn’t see where processing is taking place, but the service is always reliable,” says Biedenkapp.

Established in 2000, Lupus alpha is an owner-managed, independent asset management company that initially focused on European small and mid-cap companies, but has developed to embrace absolute return strategies and hedge funds. Assets under management are about €6 billion and the company has 85 employees.