Gravitas Brings Private Cloud to Mid-West Financial Services Firms

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Gravitas, a co-sourcing platform providing technology, risk support and business consulting to the alternative investment industry, today announced the expansion of its Gravitas Private Cloud service, an expandable, secure cloud solution in Chicago. The new service is an upgrade to Gravitas’ existing cloud presence in Chicago, and comes less than three months after Gravitas upgraded their NY cloud service.

“Asset management firms trading on Chicago exchanges, as well as those physically located in Chicago and the Midwest, will now be able to take advantage of this significant technology upgrade.”

The Gravitas Private Cloud was expanded and upgraded in June 2012 in New York with the implementation of a VBlock-based hosting solution. The service is designed for the unique computing and hosting needs of alternative asset managers, from startup to established funds. Just as with New York funds, the Gravitas Private Cloud in Chicago enables deployment of a fully functional IT system in days, versus weeks for traditional cloud solutions. It takes the advantages of cloud computing – flexibility, scalability and lowered upfront costs – and combines them with the turnkey infrastructure and security that regulated financial firms require.

The Chicago facility is an expansion and upgrade of Gravitas’ current location in the Equinix Chicago data center. Gravitas provides Chicago and Midwest region clients with the full suite of Gravitas' services, including a local network operating center and onsite support.

The upgrade of its second cloud location allows for enhanced disaster recovery and backup services in the cloud. Gravitas is now one of a few select service providers to offer Vblock hosting in multiple sites, exclusively for alternative investment clients.

“Our clients, no matter where they are, benefit from the flexibility and security that our cloud service offers,” said Gravitas CEO, Jayesh Punater. “Asset management firms trading on Chicago exchanges, as well as those physically located in Chicago and the Midwest, will now be able to take advantage of this significant technology upgrade.”

“Vblock Systems enable Gravitas to provide an optimized IT infrastructure that ensures secure and scalable performance, which are key requirements for its clients,” said VCE President Frank Hauck. “Fully virtualized Vblock Systems are an ideal foundation for asset managers to build cloud infrastructures that are both secure and nimble, regardless of whether clients are based near the Hudson River or on the shores of Lake Michigan.”

Gravitas Private Cloud offers a secure turnkey solution for startup funds, and for established funds a secure multi-tenant cloud environment for hosting, development and disaster recovery. State-of-the-art VCE™Vblock™ Systems enable secure isolation of client data while providing a flexible and powerful pool of integrated networking, computing, storage, virtualization and management technologies from industry leaders Cisco, EMC and VMware.

About Gravitas

Gravitas is a leading provider of co-sourcing solutions for technology, investment operations, risk and research support to the alternative investment and financial services industry. Founded in 1996, the company provides hedge funds, private equity funds and other alternative asset managers with unique and flexible co-sourced offerings for systems integration, technical support, software development, investment operations, risk analytics, investment research support and more. From co-sourcing and advisory through implementation, Gravitas designs creative solutions that give clients the operational freedom to invest, innovate, and scale. The company is based in New York with offices in Chicago, Greenwich, Mumbai and Ahmedabad, India. www.gravitas.co

VCE and Vblock are registered trademarks or trademarks of VCE Company LLC or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries.