Nomura Case Study

The Client was due to relocate to a new, 11 storey premises following the purchase of additional business operations in Europe and Asia. The new workspace needed to reflect the Client’s globally recognised reputation as leaders in innovation and the relocation provided the Client with the opportunity to create a collaborative culture and align IT with the business strategy.

PTS was engaged as the IT Consultancy partner for the relocation, running the IT Relocation Project Management (PMO) facility to drive the ambitious 12-month project forward through the design, procurement, implementation, migration and handover phases.

The new office would use the latest high-performance green technology, functioning as a ‘thin’ building alongside two new Data Centres providing capacity for 4,500 users. Following fit-out, 3,500 users, including all trading and operations migrated to the new premises in 7 migration phases. The Data Centre project took place alongside the relocation programme.

The Project Management Office
Over the 12-month time-frame, PTS’s consultants provided the Client team with IT Relocation implementation support, advice and guidance. The PTS PMO function worked seven days a week to coordinate 11 work streams- managing the project scope, resources, risks and issues- providing regular status reports back to the senior management team. The building construction fit-out programme was incredibly complex with the high and low-level works completed simultaneously. PTS communicated with all other members of the professional and IT teams to align IT work streams with the overall project strategy. PTS oversaw the design, procurement and implementation, testing and handover of cabling, desktop technology, network infrastructure, IP Telephony, Telecoms, Market Data Services and Mobile services. This phase of the project included the construction and set up of 32 Server Equipment and two 70-cabinet Main Equipment Rooms.

Innovative Technology
The new technology provides the Client with an innovative and collaborative working environment and includes building-wide IP video conferencing and blanket Wi-Fi for employees and guests. During the migration phase, PTS oversaw seven move projects of circa 500 staff to their new positions, including the set-up of 1,800 water-cooled trading desks over three floors, the largest installation of water-cooled desks in the world to date.

Innovative Technology
The new technology provides the Client with an innovative and collaborative working environment and includes building-wide IP video conferencing and blanket Wi-Fi for employees and guests. During the migration phase, PTS oversaw seven move projects of circa 500 staff to their new positions, including the set-up of 1,800 water-cooled trading desks over three floors, the largest installation of water-cooled desks in the world to date.

Internal Communications
The Client relies heavily on strong internal communications to ensure the efficient running of business and trading operations through receiving daily market and trend analysis. To reach a wide audience, the Client sought to exploit every available communications platform including audio conference, video conference, IPTV, webcast and broadcast. As such, the Nomura Multimedia Team needed a media production and distribution platform to serve their internal clients. PTS was able to provide the Client with a cross-platform media solution, able to ingest, produce, store and stream media in formats from full HD down to Widows Media.

IT Integration
The media platform required an ambitious IT integration project to introduce a large number of Apple Mac based servers and Mac Pro workstations onto the core business Local-Area-Network (LAN). Based around a Storage Area Network, the solution ingests stores and plays out the content while acting as a host platform for the postproduction stations.

Having PTS working full time on the site, seven days a week, enabled the Consultants to provide great value to the Client, ensuring processes were adhered to, driving the project goals from a central location. The Client was able to achieve all its project goals regarding technology, performance, innovation and building sustainability. The Sunday times endorsed the project, hailing it as one of the most eco-friendly buildings in the City with the use of green technology and a 90% waste recycling rate.

Nomura also won “Best Infrastructure Achievement” and “IT Team of the Year” at the 2010 Banking Technology Awards.