Options Redefines Managed IT Services for Financial Firms with the Launch of AtlasWorkplace

Options Redefines Managed IT Services for Financial Firms with the Launch of AtlasWorkplace
CHICAGO & NEW YORK & LONDON & HONG KONG, May 06, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Options Technology (Options), a leading provider of cloud-enabled managed services for global capital markets today announced the relaunch of Integrated Desktop, under a new brand umbrella, AtlasWorkplace, a tailored IT platform engineered to transform Hedge Funds, Private Equity firms, and Financial Services organizations with secure, scalable, and high-performance infrastructure.
AtlasWorkplace provides a comprehensive, secure IT solution designed for the unique demands of buy-side firms. It integrates a White Glove Service, with dedicated technical account management and VIP level customer care, ensuring consistent, personalized support.
Firms benefit from seamless, secure remote working with an Office and Desktop technology stack, including centralized identity management and Microsoft 365 integration. AtlasWorkplace's Cloud and Server solutions offer scalable, resilient private, public, and hybrid environments, while Security and Compliance ensures 24x7 threat monitoring, proactive detection, and dedicated support for audits.
With AI Enablement, firms gain secure access to hosted LLMs, Microsoft Copilot and RAG platforms, all backed by Tailored Solutions such as Virtual CTO/CISO services and strategic cloud migrations.
Danny Moore, President and CEO of Options, commented: "For over 30 years, Options has built its reputation on trust, consistency, and delivering when it counts. AtlasWorkplace is the product of that legacy, shaped by decades of experience supporting institutional clients and buy-side firms through growth, audits, market shocks, and everything in between. Very few service providers operate at this level. We were early pioneers in private cloud for financial services, we've maintained 14 consecutive years of SOC compliance and today we're proud to be among the top 1% of Microsoft partners globally, a recognition that reflects the highest standards in technology and operational excellence. AtlasWorkplace brings that benchmark into a platform built for scale, resilience, and transformation, serving as a critical enabler of our clients' long-term operational strategy in an increasingly complex and competitive marketplace."
Founded in 1993 as a hedge fund technology provider, Options has rapidly expanded its services to become a global leader in high-performance trading infrastructure, market data, and specialist cloud-based IT solutions for capital markets clients worldwide, including the expansion of their secure, global private cloud platform for the delivery of dedicated AI environments and the integration of real-time and historical market data.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Tom's Guide

38 minutes ago

• Tom's Guide

Windows parental controls are crashing Chrome — here's the workaround

Windows 11's Family Safety feature is supposed to block certain websites from children, but apparently it's also been causing issues with Google's Chrome browser, a (vastly more popular) competitor to Microsoft's own Edge. The problem first surfaced on Windows on June 3, per The Verge, when several users started noticing they couldn't open Chrome or their browser would crash randomly. Restarting their computer or reinstalling Chrome didn't fix the issue, and other browsers like Firefox and Opera appeared unaffected. On Monday, a Google spokesperson posted in the company's community forum that it had investigated these reports and found the issues were linked to Microsoft's new Windows Family Safety feature. This optional feature is primarily used by parents and schools to manage children's screen time, filter their web browsing, and monitor their online activity. Curiously, the bug has been going on for weeks now, and Microsoft still hasn't issued a patch. 'We've not heard anything from Microsoft about a fix being rolled out,' wrote a Chromium engineer in a bug tracking thread on June 10. 'They have provided guidance to users who contact them about how to get Chrome working again, but I wouldn't think that would have a large effect.' While this issue could be an innocent bug, Microsoft has a history of placing annoying hurdles between Edge and Chrome to entice users to stick with its browser. So anytime a technical snafu makes Chrome run worse on Windows PCs, Microsoft understandably gets some serious side eye. Thankfully, there seem to be two ways to get around this bug while we wait for Microsoft to issue a fix, and they're both fairly simple. The most straightforward is to turn off the "Filter Inappropriate Websites" setting. Head to the Family Safety mobile app or Family Safety web portal, select a user's account, and choose to disable "Filter inappropriate websites" under the Edge tab. However, that'll remove the guardrails on Chrome and let your child access any website, including the ones you were trying to block in the first place. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. If you want to keep the guardrails on and still use Chrome, some users reported that altering the name in your Chrome folder (to something like Chrome1, for example), got the browser to work again even with the Family Safety feature enabled.

TechCrunch

an hour ago

• TechCrunch

Cartoonist Paul Pope is more worried about killer robots than AI plagiarism

Paul Pope has written and drawn some of the most gorgeous comics of the twenty-first century — from 'Batman: Year 100,' in which Batman challenges a dystopian surveillance state, to 'Battling Boy,' in which an adolescent god proves his mettle by fighting giant monsters. But it's been more than a decade since Pope's last major comics work, and in a Zoom interview with TechCrunch, he admitted that the intervening years have had their frustrations. At one point, he held up a large stack of drawings and said the public hasn't seen any of it yet. 'Making graphic novels is not like making comics,' Pope said. 'You're basically writing a novel, it can take years, and you work with a contract. No one can see the work, so it can be very frustrating.' But there's good news on the horizon. A career-spanning exhibition of Pope's work just opened at the Philippe Labaune Gallery in New York, while with an expanded edition of his art book, now called 'PulpHope2: The Art of Paul Pope,' is due in the fall — as is the first volume collecting Pope's self-published science fiction epic 'THB.' It's all part of what Pope described as 'a number of chess moves' in what he grudgingly admitted is an effort to 'rebrand' himself. Pope is reemerging at a fraught time for the comics industry and creativity in general, with publishers and writers suing AI companies while generative AI tools go viral by copying popular artists. He even said that it's 'completely conceivable' that comic book could be replaced by AI. The contrast is particularly stark in Pope's case, since he's known for largely eschewing digital tools in favor of brushes and ink. But he said he isn't ruling out taking advantage of AI ('any tool that works is good'), which he already uses for research. Techcrunch event Save $200+ on your TechCrunch All Stage pass Build smarter. Scale faster. Connect deeper. Join visionaries from Precursor Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures, Underscore VC, and beyond for a day packed with strategies, workshops, and meaningful connections. Save $200+ on your TechCrunch All Stage pass Build smarter. Scale faster. Connect deeper. Join visionaries from Precursor Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures, Underscore VC, and beyond for a day packed with strategies, workshops, and meaningful connections. Boston, MA | REGISTER NOW 'I'm less concerned about having some random person create some image based on one of my drawings, than I am about killer robots and surveillance and drones,' he said. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. Image Credits:Paul Pope/Archaia You have a gallery show coming up, and it coincides with the second volume of your art book, 'PulpHope.' How did those come about? I got contacted by Boom Studios, I think it was late 2023, and they were interested in possibly collaborating on something [through their boutique imprint Archaia]. So we went back and forth for a bit, I came on as art director, and I was able to hire my own designer, this guy Steve Alexander, also known as Rinzen, and we spent about nine months [in] 2024 putting the book together. And then, coincidentally, I know Philippe Labaune, just from having been to the gallery, we have mutual friends and things, and he made the offer to show work from not only the book, [but] kind of a career retrospective. It's ballooned into something really nice. Are you somebody who thinks about the arc of their career and how it fits together, or are you mostly future-oriented? I'd say a combination of both, because — I have said this elsewhere, but I think at a certain point, an artist needs to become their own curator. Jack Kirby famously said, 'All that matters is the 10% of your best work. The rest of it gets you to the 10%.' But then in my case, I do a lot of variant covers. I've worked on many things outside of comics that are kind of hard to acquire, whether it's screen prints or fashion industry stuff. And I thought it'd be really cool if we do something that's a chronological look at the life of an artist — [something that] focuses mainly on comics, [with] a lot of stuff that people have either never seen or it's hard to find. It's the first of a number of chess moves that I've been setting up for a long time. And the gallery is — I would call it a second chess move. I have another announcement later in the summer for a new project. Making graphic novels is not like making comics. You're basically writing a novel, it can take years, and you work with a contract. No one can see the work, so it can be very frustrating. This stack here, this is my current work, and it's all stuff that basically hasn't been published yet. So I thought this was a great way to either reintroduce my work or — I hate the term 'rebrand,' but rebrand myself. In your essay 'Weapons of Choice,' you talk about all these different tools you use, the brushes and pens, the Sumi ink. Has your working style been pretty consistent, pretty analog, for your entire career? I would say mostly. I did start incorporating Photoshop for coloring and textures, kind of late to the game — I'd say it was not 'till around 2003 or so. I developed carpal tunnel around 2010, so I've tried to steer away from digital as much as I can, but I still use it. I mean, I use Photoshop every day. It's just [that] most of what I do is the comics purism of ink on a paper. Image Credits:Paul Pope/Archaia Do you think of ink on paper as objectively better, or it just happens to be how you work? I don't think it's better, to be honest. I think any tool that works is good. You know, Moebius used to say that sometimes he would draw with coffee grinds, he drew with a fork. And I have some friends, in fact, a number of friends, who are doing highly popular mainstream books, who have gravitated toward digital work, or its various advantages. And I just don't like that. But one thing [is,] I sell original art, and if you have a digital document, you might be able to make a print of it, but there is no drawing. It's binary code. Also, I feel an allegiance to the guys like Alex Toth and Steve Ditko, who took time to teach me things. Moebius, I was friends with him. Frank Miller. We all work in traditional analog art. I feel like I want to be a torchbearer for that. How do you feel about the fact that comics-making is increasingly digital? I think it's inevitable. The genie is out of the bottle at this point. So now it's a matter of being given a new, vivid array of tools that artists can choose from. When you talk to younger artists, do you feel like there's still a lane for them to do analog work? Absolutely. One of the challenges now is, you can download an app, or you can get an iPad Pro and start drawing. I think the learning curve in some ways is a little quicker, and you can fix, edit, and change things that you don't like. But it also means the drawing never ends. One thing I really like about analog art is, it's punishing. [One] piece of advice I got early on was, your first 1,000 ink drawings with a brush are going to be terrible, and you just have to get through those first 1,000. And it was true, it was humiliating — every time I sat down and tried to draw with the brushes, a lot of the work is going to be in your your fingers or your wrists, and it's easy to make mistakes, but gradually you get an authority over the tool, and then you can draw what it is you really see in your mind. Before we started recording, we were also talking about AI, and it sounds like it's something you've been aware of and thinking about. Yeah, sure, I use it all the time. I don't use it for anything creative outside of research. For example, I just wrote an essay on one of my favorite cartoonists, Attilio Micheluzzi. His library is being published by Fantagraphics right now, and I did the intro for the second book. It's amazing, because there's a lot of personal detail about the man that was really, really hard to find, unless you could literally go to — he died in Naples, but he spent a lot of his time in North Africa and Rome. This guy's a man of mystery. But you now can get the dates of his birth and his death, what caused his death, what did he do? And AI helps with that. Or sometimes, I work on story structure. But I don't use it directly to create anything. I use it more like, let's say it's a consultant. My nephew writes [code] and he describes AI as a sociopath personal assistant that doesn't mind lying to you. I've asked AI at times like, 'What books has Paul Pope published?' It's kind of strange, because maybe 80% of it will be correct, and 20% will be completely hallucinated books I've never done. So I tend to take my nephew's point of view on it. You have this skepticism, but you don't want to rule out using it where it's useful. No, absolutely not. It's a tool. It's a very contentious point with cartoonists, and there are important questions about authorship, copyright protection. In fact, I just had dinner with Frank Miller last night, we were talking about this. If [I ask AI to] give me 'Lady Godiva, naked on the horse, as drawn by Frank Miller,' I can spit that out in 30 seconds. Some people might say, 'Oh, this is my art.' But AI doesn't generate the art from the same kind of place that humans would, where it's based on identity and personal history and emotional inflection. It can recombine everything that's been known and programmed into the database. And you could do with my stuff, too. It never looks like my drawings, but it's getting better and better. But I think really, speaking as a futurist, the real question is killer robots and surveillance and a lot of technology being developed very, very quickly, without a lot of public consideration about the implications. Here in New York, at the moment, there's a really great gallery on 23rd Street called Poster House. It's pretty much the history of 20th-century poster design, which is right up my alley. So I went there with my girlfriend last week, and they currently have an exhibit on the atom bomb and how it was portrayed in different contexts through poster art. There was this movement 'Atoms for Peace,' where people were pro-atomic energy [but] were against war, and I kind of liked that, because that's how I feel about AI. I would say, 'AI for peace.' I'm less concerned about having some random person create some image based on one of my drawings, than I am about killer robots and surveillance and drones. I think that's a much more serious question, because at some point, we're going to pass a tipping point, because there's a lot of bad actors in the world that are developing AI, and I don't know if some of the developers themselves are concerned about the implications. They just want to be the first person to do it — and of course, they're going to make a lot of money. Image Credits:Paul Pope/Archaia You mentioned this idea of somebody typing, 'Give me a drawing in the style of Paul Pope.' And I think the argument that some people would make is that you shouldn't be able to do that — or at least Paul should be getting paid, since your art was presumably used to train the model, and that's your name being used. It's a good question. In fact, I was asking AI before our talk today — I think the best thing is to go to the source — 'compare unlicensed art usage [for] AI-generated imagery with torrenting of MP3s in the '90s.' And AI said that there's definitely some similarities, because you're using work that's already been produced and created without compensating the artist. But in the case of AI, you can add elements to it that make it different. It's not like [when] somebody stole Guns N' Roses' record, 'Chinese Democracy,' and put it online. That's different from sitting down with an emulator for music with AI [and saying,] 'I want to write a song in the style of Guns N' Roses, and I want the guitar solo to sound like Slash.' Obviously, if somebody publishes a comic book and it looks just like one of mine, that might be a problem. There's class action lawsuits on the behalf of some of the artists, so I think this is a legal issue that is going to be hammered out, probably. But it gets more complicated, because it's very hard to regulate AI development or distribution in places like Afghanistan or Iran or China. They're not going to follow American legal code. And then on the killer robot side, you've written a lot and drawn a lot of dystopian fiction yourself, like in 'Batman: Year 100.' How close do you feel we are to that future right now? I think we're probably, honestly, about two years away. I mean, robots are already being used on the battlefield. Drones are used in lethal warfare. I wouldn't be too surprised, within two or three years, if we start seeing robot automation on a regular basis. In fact, where my girlfriend lives in Brooklyn, there's a fully robot-serviced coffee shop, no one works there. And the scary thing is, I think people become normalized to this, so the technology is implemented before there's the social contract, where people are able to ask whether or not this is a good [thing]. My lawyer, for example, he thinks within two or three years, Marvel Comics will replace artists with AI. You won't even have to pay any artists. And I think that's completely conceivable. I think storyboarding for film can easily be replaced with AI. Animatics, which you need to do for a lot of films, can be replaced. Eventually, comic book artists can be replaced. Almost every job can be replaced. How do you feel about that? Are you worried about your own career? I don't worry about my career because I believe in human innovation. Call me an optimist. And the one distinct advantage we have over machine intelligence is — until we actually take the bridle off and machines are fully autonomous and have a conscience and a memory and emotional reflections, which are the things that are required in order to become an artist, or, for that matter, a human — they can't replace what humans do. They can replicate what humans do. If you're trying to get into the business of, let's say comics, and you're trying to draw like Jim Lee, there's a chance you might get replaced, because AI has already imprinted every single Jim Lee image in its memory. So that would be easy to replace, but what is harder to replace is the human invention of something like whatever Miles Davis introduced into jazz, or Picasso introduced, along with Juan Gris, when they invented Cubism. I don't see machines being able to do that. You were talking about the discipline needed to draw with a brush, and one of the things I worry about is, if we increasingly devalue the time and the money and everything it takes for somebody to get good at that, you can't decouple the inventiveness of the Paul Pope who comes up with these cool stories with the Paul Pope who spent all his time making drawing after drawing with brushes and ink. If we think we can just focus on coming up with cool ideas, it's not going to work like that. I do think about this. I think it would be very challenging to be 18, 19, having grown up with a screen in front of you, you can upload an app to do anything, within seconds, and that's just not the way most of human history has worked. I mean, I don't think we're at that term 'singularity' yet, but we're getting really close to it. And that's the one thing that worries me is whether we talk about killer machines or machine consciousness overtaking human ingenuity, it would almost be a forfeit on the part of the people to stop having a sense of ethics, a sense of curiosity, determination — all these old school, bootstrap concepts that some people think are old-fashioned now, but I think that's how we preserve our humanity and our sense of soul. The first big collection of your 'THB' comics is coming this fall, and it sounds like that's also a big part of the Paul Pope rebrand or relaunch, the next chess move. Is it safe to assume that one of the other next chess moves is 'Battling Boy 2'? Yes. It's funny, because for a long time, we had it scheduled — 'Battling Boy 2' has to come out before 'THB' comes out. But there was some restructuring with [my publisher's] parent company, Macmillan, and my new art director came on in 2023 and he said, 'You know what, let's just move this around. We're going to start putting 'THB' out. It's already there.' And I was so relieved because, again, 'Battling Boy' is 500-plus pages, and I'd work on it, then I'd stop working to do commercial work. I work on it. I stop. I work on the movie. It's like I'm driving this high performance car, but it doesn't have enough gas in it, so I have to keep stopping and putting gasoline [in it]. So it's been reinvigorating [to have a new book coming out], because it kick-started everything.

Yahoo

2 hours ago

• Yahoo

AMD Is Gunning for Nvidia's AI Chip Throne. Should You Buy AMD Stock Now?

For the longest time, Nvidia (NVDA) has enjoyed an open runway in the data center and artificial intelligence GPU market. But on June 12, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) made it clear that it was no longer content staying in the shadows. In a detailed reveal, the company introduced its upcoming Instinct MI400 series, a new breed of AI chips set to launch next year. 3 Highly-Rated Dividend Stocks You've Probably Never Heard Of (But Should) AMD Just Landed a New Microsoft Partnership. Should You Buy AMD Stock Here? The Crypto Rally Is 'Just Getting Started' According to Analysts. Buy Coinbase Stock Here. Get exclusive insights with the FREE Barchart Brief newsletter. Subscribe now for quick, incisive midday market analysis you won't find anywhere else. These chips form the core of a larger vision called Helios, a full server rack capable of connecting thousands of chips into one powerful 'rack-scale' system. That architecture puts AMD head-to-head with Nvidia's Blackwell platform, which links together 72 GPUs in a single configuration. AMD also drew a line in the sand on inference performance. Its new chips come with more high-speed memory, making it possible to run massive AI models on a single GPU. As anticipation builds, let us see how high this can take the AMD stock. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), based in Santa Clara, California, has carved out a formidable presence in the high-performance computing landscape with a market cap of $205.6 billion. AMD delivers one of the industry's most comprehensive portfolios of advanced processor technologies. In the last three months alone, AMD's stock has gained 22.5%, significantly outpacing the broader S&P 500 Index ($SPX), which rose by 5.4% in the same period. Currently, AMD trades at 40.2 times forward earnings and 8 times its sales. Both metrics sit below the five-year historical average. This signals a potential window for investors looking for exposure to the next wave of computing innovation. On May 6, Advanced Micro Devices stepped into the earnings spotlight and delivered a performance that raced ahead of Wall Street expectations. In its Q1 2025 results, the company posted revenue of $7.4 billion, marking a 35.9% increase from the same quarter last year and sailing past Wall Street's forecast of $7.1 billion. The showstopper in this story was AMD's data center segment, which pulled in $3.7 billion, registering a 57.2% year-over-year surge. The client and gaming segment brought in $2.9 billion. While the gaming unit struggled under pressure, sliding 29.8% to $647 million, the client business rose sharply, climbing 67.7% to reach $2.3 billion. The divergence between segments did not go unnoticed, yet the weight of the gains was strong enough to lift AMD's overall gross margin to 50%, up from 47% a year earlier. A stronger product mix and swelling demand for data center chips provided a firm foundation for this margin expansion. On the profit front, the company kept up its winning streak. Non-GAAP net income jumped 54.6% to touch $1.6 billion. Adjusted EPS also moved 54.8% higher, landing at $0.96 and ahead of analyst expectations of $0.93. In addition, AMD generated $939 million in cash from operations, while free cash flow for the quarter stood at $727 million. Peering into the second quarter of 2025, management expects revenue to hover around $7.4 billion, plus or minus $300 million. This includes a projected $700 million revenue reduction stemming from a new export license affecting MI308 shipments to China. Still, the midpoint implies 27% growth over the previous year. Analysts, however, expect some softness in profitability for the Q2 2025, projecting a 30% decline in EPS to $0.35. Yet the broader picture remains encouraging. For the full fiscal year 2025, the bottom line is expected to climb 20.6% from the previous year to $3.16. Looking further ahead, fiscal year 2026 is forecast to deliver even stronger growth, with EPS projected to rise 54% to reach $4.87. AMD holds its ground with quiet conviction, earning a 'Moderate Buy' consensus that reflects solid confidence from the analyst community. Among the 42 analysts tracking the stock, 28 issue a 'Strong Buy,' one backs a 'Moderate Buy,' and 13 advise to 'Hold.' The average price target of $133.32 represents potential upside of 5.5%. The Street-high price target of $200 implies shares could gain nearly 60% from here. On the date of publication, Aanchal Sugandh did not have (either directly or indirectly) positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article. All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. This article was originally published on