SINGAPORE, April 4, 2014 – How do you ensure that a virtual stock market works seamlessly and without hiccups while drawing real-time data from 28 stock markets, 45,000 global securities and 1,300 Forex exchange rates? Microsoft announced today that MyHero Limited, the Singapore-based company behind leading mobile stock trading app, TradeHero, has leveraged on Microsoft Azure to deliver a large volume of stock market data and insights to its user base in a cost effective and flexible manner.
With Microsoft Azure, TradeHero has managed to support 400,000 traders daily, while keeping up with the enormous amount of data across all global markets the app supports for its users. As the app simulates real-time trading activities, it is crucial for the platform to be able to handle huge workloads with minimal latency such that users can have a close-to-reality experience during trade.
Microsoft Azure is an open and technology-neutral cloud platform that enables companies and app developers to quickly build, deploy and manage applications across a global network of Microsoft-managed data centers. Developers can build applications using any language, tool or framework, as well as integrate any public cloud applications with existing IT environment. TradeHero, for example, is deployed on Linux virtual servers, which took MyHero only an hour to set-up with no interoperability issues.
Dominic Morris, Chief Technology Officer, TradeHero said: “With the high volume of trade the app handles daily from our users, it was important for us to use a secure and reliable cloud platform that enables us to scale to the ebbs and flow of our user traffic. Microsoft Azure is able to support our need for scalability and agility as we expand our operations to support more users and trading volumes globally.”
Another key reason for choosing Microsoft Azure was its affordability and flexible pay-as-you-use structure. With built-in auto scaling, Microsoft Azure is also able to support the exponential growth of users and data from TradeHero easily, making it easy for the company to plan resources effectively and take maximum advantage of the funding from their investors.
Security is also a key concern with users of TradeHero, as sensitive data is exchanged during trades, as well as personal particulars shared for in-app purchases. Microsoft Azure runs in geographically dispersed datacenters that comply with key industry standards, such as ISO/IEC 27001:2005 for security and reliability. The platform also incorporates security practices at the application and platform layers to enhance security for application developers and service administrators.
In addition to Microsoft Azure, MyHero also took advantage of the Microsoft technology stack to build their back-end services. This included using Microsoft SQL Server for the database and Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) for the API layer. MyHero also elected Microsoft Visual Studio as its development platform, because it supports multiple open-source technologies and programming languages and was well-received by its development team.
Harish Aitharaju, Server & Cloud Business Group Lead, Microsoft Singapore said: “Microsoft Azure has enabled companies like TradeHero to rapidly build and deploy apps, flexibly manage IT services, and support real-time analytics across all forms of data. This means that they can be more focused on developing more innovative apps, and spend less time on managing them.”
First launched in January 2013, TradeHero aims to bridge the gap between casual and experienced investors by providing a platform where users can choose to subscribe to expert trade feeds for data and insights to support their foray in the stock markets, or become a top trader and earn monthly subscription fees from users who follow their tips. TradeHero shares subscription revenues from followers equally with top traders, enabling users to actually monetize their trading expertise with the app.
MyHero is also a Microsoft BizSpark Plus recipient where the scheme helps cover a startup’s cloud computing costs by providing US$5,000 monthly credit for 12 months, which can be used to offset the cost of Microsoft Azure hosting.
For more information on Microsoft Azure, please click here.
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About TradeHero
TradeHero is a financial literacy and stock tip tool, which educates users by acting as a stock trading simulation, using real-time, real-world market information from 28 stock exchanges. Users can then trade virtually using that information and follow other high performing users to learn trading strategies. Since the launch of the app on the iOS store in January 2013, the app has reached #1 position in the iOS App-Store’s finance category in 75 countries and the top 10 position in over 100 countries. In March 2014, TradeHero launched the Android version of their app, which has become a one of the top financial apps in Google Play stores in multiple countries, adding over 50,000 user in the first month. TradeHero currently has over 400,000 users, spread out over 108 countries, executing over USD$270 billion in validated trades.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.
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