Any organisation involved in the financial sector needs reliable data communications, infrastructure, and so on. It should be no surprise then that London Capital Group, one of the UK's biggest spread betting companies, has teamed up with Exponential-e to come up with a Virtual Private LAN capable of providing London Capital customers with increased protection and faster data communications. Exponential-e will design and deploy the Virtual Private LAN (VPLAN) to connect London Capital's main headquarters with its outlying sites in Slough and Docklands. The connection will provide a resilient route between all the sites with a capacity of 1 GB. The direct connection and increased speed is vital to ensuring spread betters and traders can stay abreast of what's happening in the markets. In addition to upgrading its infrastructure Exponential-e will also be deploying a rapid recovery solution to prevent serious disruptions in the event of loss of power. London Capital's 70,000 clients can't afford to be out of the markets if the power goes down, so a new workplace recovery solution with redundancy and constant backups via automation is absolutely necessary. The new solution is fully compliant with all financial sector regulations. According to London Capital's Paul Marshall his company's infrastructure must be “reliable and resilient; ready to provide an uninterrupted, high level of service to our customers at all times.” He believes the combination of the new VPLAN and rapid recovery solution will provide that. He said that the combination of the two systems would enable London Capital to continue to be in compliance with regulations while offering customers the guaranteed uptime necessary to compete in the financial markets. Can the Cloud and VPLAN Coexist? The London Capital project clearly illustrates there is still a need for more traditional ways of doing things rather than simply jumping into the cloud. Not that cloud computing is not important or useful, but is not a good option for things like spread betting and financial markets, at least for serious players. Maybe someday in the future it will be, but it's not now. And even while the cloud is being pushed aggressively in Europe London Capital has chosen the more secure and reliable VPLAN route. This is proven technology they know will work; it is proven technology that will keep both they and their clients hooked into the markets at all times. Their clients should be happy to hear the news, that's for sure. As for Exponential-e they have been working with London Capital for the better part of seven years. Most of the solutions they've offered have been beneficial to London Capital and its clients. The real test of this new deal will be the first major power outage that occurs at one of the LCG facilities. Though no one suspects there will be any problems, there's no way to know until the situation arises.