Customer Case Study – Financial Services Plus500 harnesses multicloud to power three million trades every month This financial trading technology provider integrated the powerful capabilities of with VMware Private Cloud to meet and exceed growing security, performance and customer experience demands.

Our customer What we achieved together Plus500 is a market-leading provider of Contracts With a wealth of in-house technical expertise, for Difference (CFDs), delivering top of the range Plus500 needed a partner to act as an extension trading conditions on shares, forex, commodities of its team to enhance its capabilities. As and indices alongside innovative trading Plus500 has grown, its cloud requirements have technology. The company is headquartered in become more complex. The company experiences Israel and has subsidiaries in the UK, Cyprus, dramatic spikes in traffic, so it needed a reliable Australia, Singapore and Bulgaria. cloud platform with elastic qualities. And its operation in a highly regulated financial services industry requires a constant focus on compliance and security.

How we helped The obstacles they faced Managed private cloud — VMware® Private Cloud; has managed the Plus500 Managed public cloud ­—; private cloud environment for more than 10 years Multilayered Security and Compliance – Rackspace and helped Plus500 transition to multicloud Managed Security, Proactive Detection and with Google Cloud Platform™. The flexibility Response, Armor, CrowdStrike. and scalability of this environment ensure its trading platform can facilitate more than three million trades every month — more than one per second. Rackspace Managed Security services help Plus500 navigate complexities related to data and security. “Rackspace Technology offers us the support and reassurance that we need.”

Ari Shotland, Chief Technology Officer, Plus500

A purely online operation “Everything Plus500 does is online,” explains While the pandemic has accelerated certain to improve our users’ experience and Ari Shotland, Chief Technology Officer at requirements, Plus500 has always been to innovate through technology. Being 2020 has been a tumultuous year for Plus500. “I do not just mean the back end, forward-thinking in its online-first and cloud- online-based, and given how quickly things global financial systems. COVID-19 and I mean our entire operation — we are an based approach to operations. The company change in the modern world, we have to be changing economic conditions have caused online trading platform, so all of our users was founded in 2008 in Israel and appointed agile and constantly looking to adapt and international upheaval in financial trading need to be able to access our website and Rackspace Technology as its managed service enhance what we are doing, which is why a and volatile stocks. app at all times. provider soon after launch. Rackspace partner like Rackspace Technology has been Technology™ has seen the complexity of so invaluable.” In the first quarter of the year, volumes “For this reason, reliability has been the most Plus500’s technology needs evolve. of trades experienced a major boost important thing —­ if we are offline for even Plus500 has 200,000 active customers around and activity in the stock market five minutes, people can miss trades and The company initially ran on Windows the world who trade the equivalent of $1.3 skyrocketed. Since then, there’s been lose money, and obviously we are strictly Operating System before launching a web- trillion each year. increasing unpredictability. regulated as a result. based version of the platform in 2010, and its first apps for smartphones and tablets in Plus500, an online trading company, is fully “Rackspace Technology offers us the support 2011 and 2012 respectively. immersed in these market fluctuations and and reassurance that we need.” had to scale quickly to match consumer “Technology is at the heart of what we needs and behaviour. do,” says Shotland. “We are always looking

Rackspace Technology Customer Case Study 2 Technology helped integrate Google A long-term partnership Cloud Platform to make Plus500 a multicloud operator. Since Plus500’s earliest days, Rackspace Technology has supported its evolution to “The addition of Google Cloud is a very becoming a global trading company with important one for us,” says Shotland. “How multiple platforms. to scale our system effectively was always at the forefront of our minds, and it was quickly “Our requirements were not always clear that moving to multicloud would be the straightforward, out-of-the- solutions,” right thing for Plus500. explains Idan Mashaal, Director of Cyber Security at Plus500, who has been a central “We chose Google Cloud for a variety of part of operations since 2009. “Our data reasons. It is primarily a data platform, which needs to be treated as a crown jewel. We is what we needed, and in that regard, it is have been innovative with how we have the best on the market and most suitable approached our platform and always for our needs. challenge conventional thinking about how we build and view our offering, aided by the “Even away from any expansion plans, public adaptability of Rackspace Technology.” cloud offers us many benefits alongside our private cloud. The private cloud retains our “Resilience has always been essential stability and business continuity, while the to our solution,” says Mashaal. “We have inclusion of Google Cloud alongside that is relied enormously on the support of and about improving our overall performance. collaboration with Rackspace Technology — we never viewed it as an outsourced vendor “Already, it has increased our processing relationship, we are all working together. power and helped us to democratise our data and meet our business requirements — in “Round-the-clock support from Rackspace such a demanding sector in this regard. This Technology has allowed us to operate a more benefit cannot be overstated.” sustainable model. Its team is an extension of our own and gives us the confidence to The COVID-19 pandemic also added to continue to scale internationally.” Plus500’s operational requirements, as lockdowns around the world drove even more activity online.

Embracing public and “There was immediately an increased load multicould in online trading,” says Shotland. “We had “Round-the-clock support to add hardware, increasing our number of As Plus500’s business has become servers, but it already showed how important from Rackspace Technology increasingly global, its robust and bespoke public cloud will be in this regard too and has has allowed us to operate a VMware private cloud platform has continued accelerated our adoption of it. Its autoscaling to underpin its operations. is something that will only become more more sustainable model.” valuable to how we operate.” However, with expansion and international growth a key business priority, the need for greater scalability became apparent. Idan Mashaal, Director of Public cloud was the clear solution and Cyber Security, Plus500 over the last couple of years, Rackspace

Rackspace Technology Customer Case Study 3 Keeping everything secure of dismissing a real threat as one that looks seeing, what different kinds of threat there About Rackspace similar to a previous false one.” are. That therefore adds to the risk, and you The cybersecurity requirements of a data- cannot afford that. Cybersecurity is evolving Technology heavy and strictly regulated platform The transition to a multicloud environment all the time, you have to stay in front of Rackspace Technology is the multicloud like Plus500’s are considerable and has also brought new challenges to the it wherever possible. This is why we use solutions expert. We combine our expertise constantly adapting. cybersecurity requirements. Plus500 is now Rackspace Technology’s SOC.” in the process of upgrading to the latest with the world’s leading technologies — As operations have expanded and grown version of the RMS Proactive Detection and As Plus500 continue to expand globally, they across applications, data and security — to more complex, the challenges of keeping Response (PDR) offering, with increased can scale confidently with long-term partner deliver end-to-end solutions. We have a everything online and operational security and management capabilities Rackspace Technology managing their proven record of advising customers based have also changed. supported by the implementation of Armor multicloud environment and advising them on their business challenges, designing and Crowdstrike toolings. strategically. Plus500 look forward to building solutions that scale, building and managing “We see thousands of attacks every day,” on the extensive capabilities of Google Cloud those solutions, and optimising returns explains Mashaal. “Not all of these are “Multicloud adds a lot of complexities,” says Platform and all new developments will be into the future. sophisticated, not many of them actually Mashaal. “Our networks are all connected, wrapped in Rackspace Technology security As a global, multicloud technology services threaten us, but of course, these days there which means you can go all the way from and compliance services. are constantly attempts on our network.” logging on to Google Cloud right through pioneer, we deliver innovative cloud to our core servers. It’s great, and how capabilities to help customers build new In response to these threats, Plus500 deploys multicloud needs to work, but of course it revenue streams, increase efficiency and a suite of defences with Rackspace Managed adds to the vulnerability as you lose visibility create incredible experiences. Recognised Security (RMS) at its core. of that journey and of who is doing what.” as a best place to work, year after year, by Fortune, Forbes, Great Places to Work “Our security is multi-layered,” says Mashaal. “A key next step for us is working with and Glassdoor, we attract and develop “The Rackspace Technology part of our Rackspace Technology to improve this. world-class talent to deliver the best defences is the last mile — the traffic it sees This is where Armor, which is part of the expertise to our customers. Everything we has already been scrubbed by firewalls and new PDR offering, will help as it should do is underpinned by an obsession with means that if something triggers and requires catch everything — it enhances our existing our customers’ success — our Fanatical action from RMS, it is almost certainly real security portfolio and will seamlessly run Experience™ — so they can work faster, and malicious. across Google Cloud and our own servers, but smarter and stay ahead of what’s next. limit our vulnerability.” “RMS is an essential and powerful line of Learn more at www.rackspace.com/en-gb or defence — there is no need to bother it with The end goal is for Rackspace Technology to call UK: +44 203 553 6268 minor issues, it is the serious threats that we provide Plus500 with a single pane security cannot otherwise stop that we know we can offering across all of its operations, both rely on it for.” public and private cloud, and make it as easy This case study is for your informational purposes only. RACKSPACE MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS CASE STUDY. All customer examples and the information and results illustrated here are based upon the customer’s experiences with the referenced Rackspace services and are not necessarily indicative of the future performance of Rackspace services. as possible to have total visibility across Rackspace detailed services descriptions and legal commitments are stated in its services agreements. Rackspace services’ features and benefits depend on system configuration and may require enabled hardware, software or additional service This security integration dates back to 2018 activation. Actual cost of specific hosted environment and performance characteristics will vary depending on individual all environments. customer configurations and use case. and has continued to evolve since then. Copyright © 2020 Rackspace :: Rackspace®, Fanatical Support®, Fanatical Experience™ and other Rackspace marks are either registered service marks or service marks of Rackspace US, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other Alongside these specifics, it is the expertise trademarks, service marks, images, products and brands remain the sole property of their respective holders and do not imply “When GDPR requirements launched, it was endorsement or sponsorship and the breadth of knowledge Rackspace a good time for us to be early adopters of November 9, 2020 / Rackspace-Case-Study-Plus500-FIN-EMEA-TSK-3217 Technology can bring that is the most RMS,” says Mashaal. “It helps me a lot with valuable to Plus500 in its security operations. compliance and makes it easier and more accurate for our teams to run security. “Some organisations may consider building their own Security Operations Centre (SOC),” “We have tailored it to our needs and refined explains Mashaal. “If you do it yourselves, it, reducing the number of false positives the you can only build it based on what you team then hunts for — too many of them and see yourselves — you don’t get the shared you risk a ‘boy who cried wolf’ scenario knowledge of what other companies are

Rackspace Technology Customer Case Study 4