I remember my first City job in the early eighties and people saying that one day the office will be a thing of the past and we will all work from home. It seemed a long way off. What computers there were then, involved the completion of cards that were passed to staff in a separate room who worked large ‘loom’ like contraptions which produced cards with holes. These were then processed by large grey boxes that were kept in controlled air-conditioned Cathedral like rooms. Yes, I’m old.
I moved from that environment to one where everything was done manually (and a lot more efficiently). This involved keeping accounting records in something called “Kalamazoo” Ledgers whilst maintaining investment records in similar ledgers. Investment valuations were produced once a month. There was no concept of a transaction. Each month, updated positions were sent to a company called “Datastream” and two days later you would get a valuation. If there was an error the process started again. I was not working at a small boutique fund manager, but at GT Management (who were later acquired by Invesco). GT was a great place to work (we joked that the GT stood for Good Times).
Doing everything manually meant that you learned the whole process from end to end. This was a great grounding for what would become be my real interest in Systems Design. Moving on, like all companies, computers were gradually introduced into GT. However, we were still a long way from home working. GT bought a system called TIMAS (Total Investment Management Solution). For its time, it was good. The tasks of administering funds and entering data were still separate. Things really didn’t take a step forward until GT decided they wanted to have all their global offices on a single platform. By the way, this was still pre-internet. Oracle were chosen to take this project forward.
There were huge amounts of data being sent around the world. It was however quite innovative in that it gave an insight as to how things work today, a precursor to the internet. Having said that, in terms of our “mythical” home office, I think this was a small step in the right direction. I remember when the “Barings” collapse happened, by this time the internet was in its early days. The CEO of GT called me at home (I think it may have been a Saturday). After dialling in to the server (who remembers the noise that used to make), I was able to get back to him the same day and inform him of our exposure. He was at home and so was I, which is why I say we had made a step forward to ‘home working’.
The major factor in removing the barriers to the thing we were talking about in the very early eighties was the widespread use of the internet. Three other factors related to the internet were essential to this goal:-
- Faster access
- Far greater availability and
- Wireless.
When I started Phoenix Administration Services (Phoenix), a Third Party Administration company, after GT were acquired by Invesco in 1998, I started to develop a system which became known as AAMS (Abacus Asset Management System). Being remote from Investment Managers presented us with the same problems our “mythical’ home office presents.
In order to grow Phoenix, we had to have several USPs that differentiated us from the far more illustrious competitors. One was offering our clients a very bespoke and quality service. However, new small fund managers looking for an administrator would often choose larger organisations as they perceived it gave them scale and would be more acceptable to their investors, so we needed something else. Therefore, we developed a Front End to the software that would be located at the Fund Manager’s office and would give them tools to assist them in their jobs. It was in effect an ‘Order Management System’. We also developed a ‘real time valuation’ if the client had a Bloomberg terminal. It used our holdings and cash positions and Bloomberg’s real time prices and exchange rates. This gave Phoenix a real boost.
So why does the Cloud matter? It is true that without the internet and the advances made in how we connect to it, our “Home office” would still not be possible. However, having a server that is remote and easily accessible by anyone where an internet connection exists is key to our location independency. A virtual organisation with its staff scattered across the globe is now not only a reality but something that companies wishing to reduce costs should embrace. If the right hosting service is chosen companies can reduce their IT infrastructure and greatly enhance the DR arrangements. Other tools such as Skype/Teams/Zoom and other remote meeting software also play a part
With the current crisis, this has never been more relevant. Just imagine if you had systems in place that meant your teams could work from anywhere without degrading service and reducing customer satisfaction. I feel we are now ready to embrace the concepts that I first heard in the early 1980’s.