C3PT Group is a long-standing post-trade technology provider based in New Zealand and the United Kingdom. It provides secure services to hedge funds, asset managers, Tier 1 banks, regulators, processing utilities and specialist financial-market participants around the world.

Headquartered in London, C3PT serves a customer base concentrated across Europe and North America. Its global technical capability operates from New Zealand.

C3PT’s C3 Post Trade SaaS platform connects to more than 4,000 data interfaces and processes over one million transactions each trading day. The platform manages more than USD $1 trillion in trade and position value, supported by a five-terabyte data estate across 26 databases and an event-driven microservices architecture.

Customers rely on C3 around the clock. The platform has maintained 99.99% uptime across 20 years of operation.

C3PT Group (C3PT) is a long-standing New Zealand and UK based post-trade technology provider, delivering secure services to Hedge Funds, Asset Managers, Tier-1 trading banks, regulators, processing utilities, and other specialist financial market participants around the world.

While C3PT is headquarted out of London to serve the client base concentrated in Europe and North America, the organisations global technical powerhouse is run out of New Zealand.

C3PT operates the C3 Post Trade SaaS system, a very large processing platform delivering post trade processing service for clients globally. C3 is deeply embedded in the market financial markets with over 4,000 data interfaces from across the global running 24 x 7. C3 processes over one million transactions per trading day and accounts for over USD one trillion in Trade and Position value on the service at any one time. The platform sits on a 5 terabyte data store spread across 26 large databases on which runs on a scalable, event-driven microservices architecture, with security, user experience, and data processing resilience central to its role. C3 is a mission critical, high volume global 24×7 platform with an industry leading 99.99% uptime over 20 years of operation.

For C3, cloud modernisation carried direct business weight. The platform sits behind high-trust financial operations, so any change had to protect customer continuity while giving the business a stronger base for the next stage of growth.

The C3 platform evolved over a 20-year period from the original modest workloads to the large processing juggernaut it is today, starting life before the Cloud even existed by running its critical workload from its robust but now aging UK data centre infrastructure. The massive on-premise server ecosystem for C3 approached its end of support, and the business faced a familiar choice: refresh the data centre estate or move to cloud.

Refreshing the existing environment meant upgrading the massive server ecosystem buying with another full set of hardware in Europe for production and Asia for production mirror and development. It also meant carrying forward the limits of that model: fixed capacity, large upfront spend, ongoing support risk, and less room to adapt as the platform evolved.

“This was the biggest upgrade we’ve done in 20 years of the C3 platform and the stakes for a successful move without client impact is sky high” says Rob Denham, C3 Chief Executive.

C3 had already built strong internal architecture and cloud thinking. The team wanted the move to Azure to do more than replace one hosting model with another. It wanted a governed foundation for repeatable change, clearer cost visibility, stronger resilience, and future workloads. Above all this move had to be seamless and invisible to the client for continuity of processing.

C3 engaged Adaptiv to bring specialist DevOps and Azure platform engineering capability into the wider programme. C3 needed market leading expertise with the skills to build out a future proof power platform and also effect a move while maintaining client continuity. Adaptiv worked with C3’s architecture, engineering, QA, delivery, and operations teams, and coordinated with a third-party cloud service provider.

The engagement started with validation and planning. C3 had already done significant architecture work, and Adaptiv reviewed the proposed direction against Microsoft best practice, including the Cloud Adoption Framework, the Azure Landing Zone guidance that sits under it, and Well-Architected principles.

Adaptiv then helped turn the architecture direction into a delivery model. The team provided a migration approach, delivery steps, and a timeline, then helped sequence the work around C3’s customer commitments.

“C3 wanted a platform foundation and DevOps model that could support future workloads and modernisation work,” says James Clarke, Cloud and Platform Engineering Practice Lead at Adaptiv.

Adaptiv also brought years of C3 platform knowledge into the programme. The team understood C3’s systems and infrastructure, then applied that knowledge through Azure, DevOps, Solace, Kubernetes, and Infrastructure-as-Code experience.

“We embedded the Adaptiv team in our project delivery,” says Richard Petley C3 COO. “They were at every stand-up, reactive to our needs, forthcoming with problem solving, and quick to turn issues around.”

C3 wanted infrastructure knowledge captured in code, peer review, and repeatable deployment patterns.

Adaptiv helped C3 implement a code-first Azure foundation using Azure-native Bicep templates, Azure DevOps pipelines, and reusable deployment patterns. Teams could raise a change as a pull request, review it, approve it, and deploy it through a controlled pipeline.

The code-first approach reduced reliance on manual “click ops” and helped remove configuration drift. It also gave C3 a repeatable model for future environments.

“The code base became the source of truth,” says Clarke. “We built the templates once so C3 could deploy them across environments.”

The Azure Landing Zone gave C3 clearer separation between production, non-production, platform, management, connectivity, and shared services. Leaders could see where workloads lived, how controls applied, and where cloud spend sat.

C3 built security and governance into the model. The team used least-privilege access, peer-reviewed changes, logging, auditability, and repeatable deployment controls to support a platform that financial services customers could trust.

“The value of Infrastructure-as-Code is repeatability,” says Petley. “We can stand it up, take it down, stand it back up, and it is not manual.”

C3’s customers use the platform every day. The migration sequence mattered as much as the architecture.

Adaptiv and C3 built the Azure environment beside the legacy platform. The teams tested patterns in non-production, then moved services after the new approach had proved itself.

C3 prioritised the file transfer solution. The team could notify customers ahead of time, ask them to update settings, and move them onto the cloud-based path while the old and new environments stayed aligned behind the scenes.

Adaptiv also helped modernise core platform services, SQL, web front-end routing, storage, networking, and security patterns. The work included Azure Front Door, Application Gateway, Azure Firewall, Azure Blob Storage, Azure Files, modernised SFTP and file transfer patterns, SQL Server on Azure VM availability groups, and hub-and-spoke networking through the Azure Landing Zone framework.

C3 gained a more available platform model and reduced dependence on ageing on-premises infrastructure.

“The team migrated a production platform used by clients across multiple time zones while keeping the platform online,” says Clarke.

C3 ran the new and old environments in parallel for testing, then completed the production cutover across a weekend.

“Monday morning, the system was back up running in the cloud,” says Petley. “We had run in parallel to test, then cut over across the weekend with Zero impact on clients”

The DevOps results gave C3 a more controlled operating model in Azure.

Every part of the environment was deployed through Infrastructure-as-Code. One hundred percent, with no manual build steps. In production alone, the team deployed 389 resources by code, plus 123 resources in the connectivity subscription and 34 resources in shared production logging and alerting. Non-production added another couple of hundred resources.

Work that used to take weeks now takes two hours. C3 can rebuild its entire infrastructure from code in a single morning, stripping roughly 14 days of manual configuration effort out of every environment build.

The programme retired 20 legacy virtual machines, modernised 15 more in production, and rebuilt six core services on cloud-native patterns.

Adaptiv built the templates for reuse. C3 can deploy the same patterns across environments without rebuilding the foundation each time.

“For us, uptime is the metric,” says Petley. “The biggest difference after the migration is increased stability and guaranteed uptime for our clients.”

The move to Azure gave C3 clearer visibility across environments, workloads, and cost. Structured subscriptions and resource groups made it easier to see where cloud spend sat and where the team could act.

Adaptiv also supported C3 with FinOps training and optimisation recommendations. The team used reserved instances across about three quarters of VM infrastructure, with potential savings of up to 60% on machine cost.

C3 reduced legacy infrastructure dependency, strengthened governance, and gained a platform model its teams can use for future workloads.

“Getting off legacy hardware infrastructure has improved our flexibility, growth path, and scalability,” says Petley. “It gives us a future-proofed path without tying ourselves into a particular set of hardware.”

Adaptiv’s value came from technical depth and the way the team worked inside the programme.

C3 knew its platform in detail. Adaptiv brought Azure, DevOps, migration, Infrastructure-as-Code, and FinOps experience. The teams respected both knowledge sets and made decisions together.

Adaptiv advised, built, automated, tested, and worked beside C3’s architecture, engineering, QA, delivery, and operations teams. The embedded model helped C3 keep momentum through a complex migration with many moving parts.

“Adaptiv advised as a technical partner, worked embedded with the team, and delivered the implementation,” says Clarke.

C3 also valued Adaptiv’s willingness to challenge, suggest, and work through options with the team.

“James is very good at putting alternative ideas and suggestions on the table,” says Petley. “Adaptiv were open to working with us and making suggestions for different ways of doing things.”

C3 now has a code-first Azure foundation that supports repeatable change, stronger governance, clearer cost visibility, and future modernisation work.

The project moved C3 away from legacy infrastructure risk and gave its teams a platform model they can keep extending. For a business processing more than one million transactions and over USD $1 trillion each day, that foundation matters.

“This gives us a foundation we can continue to build on as the platform evolves.” said Rob Denham C3 CEO.