For decades, financial market infrastructure has been measured by the familiar metrics of bandwidth, latency and availability. While each is of course important, they no longer tell the whole infrastructure performance story.

A technology-driven quantitative trading firm was experiencing rapid growth across its European operations. The organisation relies on sophisticated trading platforms, large volumes of market data, and highly connected infrastructure to support business-critical operations.

Financial markets are steadily moving towards continuous operation. As settlement cycles compress, payments become real time, artificial intelligence accelerates data movement, and trading activity extends across markets and time zones, infrastructure assumptions that have remained largely unchallenged for decades are being quietly dismantled.  

As one of the world’s largest retailers, this client operates an extensive store network underpinned by a highly complex back-office infrastructure. While reliable connectivity to individual stores is essential, the business identified an even more critical priority: a resilient, high-performance core data centre network capable of supporting all central back-office processing at scale. 

As settlement cycles compress, payments become always-on, and AI drives unprecedented data movement, financial institutions can no longer afford infrastructure that was built by accumulation rather than engineered by design. 

Jennifer was recognised for her financial leadership in navigating Zayo Europe’s independence and her role in driving the company’s standalone finance strategy.

This summer marks the milestone of being two years into our journey of independence, and we’re transforming at speed.

We now lead the fibre infrastructure market in a new collaborative strategy, rather than traditional carrier overbuild. We combine one of Europe’s largest owned fibre footprints with the continent’s fastest-growing IP network and Tier-1 global connectivity to deliver premium connectivity solutions, operational excellence, and exceptional customer outcomes through a partnership approach.

In today’s AI-driven infrastructure landscape, connectivity is becoming just as critical as compute itself. In many cases, data centre (DC) operators must address network and interconnection requirements long before GPU capacity or compute resources are even deployed. 

Connecting to the emerging neocloud ecosystem is rarely straightforward. These providers operate across multiple, geographically diverse data centres, creating significant complexity around low-latency connectivity, scalability, and resilient inter-site networking.

Sofia Connect has established itself as a key wholesale carrier in Eastern Europe, supporting data centres, carriers and enterprises with vital regional connectivity. But as demand for greater capacity and more direct access to Western Europe’s digital hubs increased, the company needed a partner with global reach and proven reliability.  

That’s where Zayo Europe came in. By connecting Sofia, we’ve added another key location to our European footprint, multiple links of redundant connectivity allowed us to provide Sofia Connect with a growing, high availability, Tier 1 network – pairing their regional expertise with our global reach.