- During a typical day, hedge fund portfolio managers (PM) are in constant communication with researchers, analysts, and traders regarding potential opportunities, market changes, and frequent investment monitoring. When the firm is one of the largest hedge funds in the world, with multiple office locations worldwide, a reliable and flexible communication system is vital to connecting them with one another at any time.
When GMI Automation was approached about installing a communication system that included videoconferencing solutions and multiple video walls with multimedia streaming capability, Craig Metzger, GMI president and CEO turned to ClearOne to keep everyone at the hedge fund tied together.
“The hedge fund world is fast paced and the communication is often hectic and frenetic,” Metzger said. “And the portfolio manager has to be in constant communication with the firm’s traders and analysts and that’s difficult as he is often a moving target.”
Metzler chose the ClearOne COLLABORATE Pro 600 videoconferencing solution as it offers multi-site collaboration with up to 25 locations where users can join from anywhere, using any device—PC, mobile, room endpoints, or telephone. And with the Pro 600, multi-site collaboration can be done with both traditional SIP/H.323 video conferencing and cloud video collaboration in a single appliance.
“The pace at which these guys work is too fast for them to be worried about the technology they’re using, and with the COLLABORATE Pro 600 there is one consistent user interface and experience across all conferencing and collaboration applications,” Metzger said.
To help everyone keep pace with this constantly on-the-move PM, GMI also added a series of video walls at the head of all the trade desks in each office, so when the PM enters any location a biometric read of his finger lets the team know exactly which location he has entered. That location automatically becomes the focal point of the video conference and the video walls automatically reflect this.
“They refer to the video walls as ‘The Brady Bunch Walls’ and they allow all the head traders and key analysts from the various offices to communicate with the PM. We deployed the ClearOne VIEW Pro Encoders E120 and VIEW Pro Decoders D210 in all of them as they deliver the highest-quality multimedia streaming over an existing IP network,” Metzger said. “They provide such a simple, install-ready set up that delivers excellent video quality, so this allows for some very integral face-to-face communication between the PM, analysts and traders.”
Metzger also installed ClearOne UNITE 200 PTZ Cameras for the high-quality video feed the system needed. The UNITE 200 PTZ is a versatile, professional-grade HD video camera complete with USB, HDMI, and IP connections that can be used for a wide range of possible applications.
Roughly one-third of GMI Automation’s customers are hedge funds, so the company is well aware that portfolio managers spend their entire day making important, rapid-fire decisions about what to buy and sell, so communication failure simply isn’t an option. GMI also knows the PMs they’ve set up with ClearOne voice and visualization solutions are well positioned to make those decisions from bell to bell.
