TP ICAP Cuts IT Carbon Emissions by 31% Using AWS

As an inter-dealer broker, TP ICAP acts as an intermediary between market participants, such as investment banks and hedge funds. These businesses buy and sell financial products in markets where there are no centralized exchanges or market makers, including over-the-counter or bond markets. It’s a business area built on trust and reliability and is highly regulated by government agencies.

As an early adopter of cloud services, the company used the technology to accelerate digital transformation. "We started moving applications into the cloud in 2014,” says Andrew Shannon, head of cloud services at TP ICAP. “What drew us to AWS was the capacity to rapidly and cost-effectively meet the demands of our expanding business.”

While migrating workloads and services to AWS, TP ICAP has also found that using the cloud improved its sustainability credentials. “Using AWS is more efficient than on-premises infrastructure and it also lowers our carbon footprint,” says Shannon. “That’s important because many of our clients are asking us about our sustainability practices and our emissions footprint as part of their own ESG (environmental, social, and governance) initiatives.”

TP ICAP is currently running about 50 percent of its IT estate on AWS, with a goal of running 80 percent of its systems in the cloud. “Our vision is a cloud-first strategy, which means that for anything new we do, we want the cloud to be the first-choice technology platform,” says Dan Wray, group chief information officer (CIO) at TP ICAP. “Our results from using AWS regarding cost optimization and cutting our carbon emissions show it’s been the right choice for us.”

The company has identified ways that using AWS can help it to consume less energy and use more renewable sources while still delivering the speed and reliability its customers need. For instance, it reduced emissions by replacing data centers with on-demand resources. Cloud offers an opportunity to optimize costs—the ability to eliminate idle capacity and spinning up and down resources as needed means there is no wasted energy or excess emissions from a data center sitting idle.The company also burns fewer fossil fuels using AWS. “AWS is already using a lot of renewable energy and is committed to developing more,” says Sarah Collins, director of sustainability and community investment at TP ICAP. “If we were still running on premises, we might not have that access to renewable energy.”

These insights came from participating in a AWS Well-Architected review and adopting the AWS Well-Architected Framework—including the Well-Architected Sustainability Pillar—which helps cloud architects build secure, high-performing, resilient, and efficient infrastructure for a variety of applications and workloads. TP ICAP can now track emissions from its AWS services using a dashboard on AWS. “We can see various metrics, break them down by core services, by region, and track trends to refine our behavior,” says Collins. “We document our practices to help us meet our own goals and so our customers can be sure we comply with their needs.”

As a result of these efforts, TP ICAP has reduced its year-on-year carbon emissions from its IT estate by 31 percent using AWS. It used 29 metric tons of carbon dioxide (MTCO2) from Feb 2022–2023, compared to 42 MTCO2 from Feb 2021–2022. This benefits the environment and supports the company’s commitment to sustainability.

TP ICAP can also support its customers’ sustainability goals. It used its expertise in market infrastructure, client connectivity, liquidity, price discovery, and data solutions to build and run a marketplace that trades in carbon on AWS. “We understand trading and we’ve learned a lot in our own transformation,” says Shannon. “Not every business can get to net zero conventionally by just cutting its own emissions. We saw a need for a marketplace where businesses can trade carbon emissions up or down to meet their targets.”

Sustainability is a concern for many companies. “Many of our trading clients are in the energy sector,” says Shannon. “They are evolving ESG plans—including sustainability—in response to demands from investors, governments, business partners, and the public. Trading in things like carbon offsets or credits for renewable energy is a logical step to help meet their targets. We give them a place to do that.”