Alphalion Technology Delivers Next-Gen Post-Trade Processing with SaaS Platform Running on AWS

Alphalion Technology (Alphalion) is a fintech startup that offers Falcon, a highly automated SaaS platform for real-time processing of financial trades in middle and back-office operations. Falcon supports a wide range of financial products, including futures, options, forex trading, equities, contracts for difference, fixed income, and others.

The platform simplifies multi-asset post-trade processing for sell-side businesses, such as brokers, banks, and wealth management. These entities increasingly invest in SaaS platforms like Falcon to replace aging systems that lack performance and complicate compliance reporting. Additionally, mid-sized online brokers and newer entrants leverage Falcon to enhance post-trade processing speed in a competitive marketplace.

To meet market demands, Alphalion chose to provide Falcon as a cloud-native solution, prioritizing scalability, reliability, and security to bolster its SaaS platform. In pursuit of a global cloud infrastructure compliant with data localization regulations, Alphalion evaluated multiple cloud providers, ultimately selecting Amazon Web Services (AWS). Lou Wang, CEO, and founder of Alphalion Technology, says, “Trust is crucial in financial services. We wanted a cloud provider that both we and our customers could trust, and AWS stood out.”

Alphalion collaborated with its local AWS account team to design Falcon's flexible cloud infrastructure. The platform's cloud-native Linux-based applications, running in Docker containers, is hosted on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) virtual services. Alphalion also adopted Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) for PostgreSQL for its application databases and uses Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) to store compliance reports and statements and system backups.

To maximize security, Alphalion utilizes Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) to create security groups and network access control lists to govern access to Amazon EC2 instances. Furthermore, using AWS Direct Connect, Alphalion secures data as it moves between customer networks and AWS. The company also adopted AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) to lock down identities and access AWS services and resources.

In 2023, Alphalion enhanced its application and data security by implementing AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) for creating, managing, and controlling cryptographic keys across AWS environments. “Implementing the AWS KMS API [application programming interface] through the AWS SDK was seamless and saved months of development work,” says Wang. “AWS KMS provided a secure and scalable encryption and key management solution.”

With its AWS environment in place, Alphalion can now focus on platform development rather than infrastructure management. The company utilizes AWS CloudFormation to deploy security appliances, ensuring consistent environments with each deployment. This approach minimizes time spent managing resources, allowing a greater focus on security applications running on AWS. Wang says, “AWS CloudFormation ensures that each new environment is identical, making it easier to provision so we can focus 70 percent more time on platform development.”