Macquarie Group was able to move its main trading and settlement system, Calypso, to the public cloud. NASDAQ developed Calypso, which manages currency settlements and enables group-wide front-to-back trading.
The existing version of Calypso, which predated cloud architecture, had been operating in a data center that was scheduled for closure. To ensure continuity, the group opted to migrate Calypso to Amazon Web Services (AWS). Followed by the integration of other applications, including its SAP core banking system.
Given Calypso’s “mission-critical” status, Justin Buckland, the program manager for commodities and global markets post-trade technology at Macquarie, underlined how crucial the migration’s success is. He clarified, “We needed to execute the migration flawlessly to ensure the project’s success.”
Buckland emphasized that in order to take full advantage of AWS’s benefits, one must stay current with its versions. He admitted that there were technological and logistical challenges in the conversion because the current version of Calypso was not built for the cloud.
After four weeks of preparation, Buckland’s team executed the migration over one weekend. This preparation involved various teams, including risk, compliance, enablement, and cybersecurity. They meticulously tracked the go-live moment by moment. He reported that the outcome was met with silence, indicating no disruption: “Crickets.”
Buckland stated, “With that large risk, our mission had to be that the business didn’t notice the change. We went live, and it was actually really successful.” Following the migration, the group plans to upgrade Calypso to a more cloud-compatible version.
Macquarie Group migrated not only the core system but also the Calypso database to AWS public cloud infrastructure, specifically Amazon Aurora. According to Buckland, a lot of work went into switching from an antiquated database to Amazon Aurora.
According to Craig Edwards, Macquarie’s domain architect for commodities and global markets platform strategy, the team’s ability to track and observe Calypso’s performance has improved significantly due to the transfer.
