NASDAQ, CME Group, and BG Cantor Leap Onto The Cloud

As most members of the financial technology community ponder their cloud strategies, NASDAQ OMX, CME Group and BG Cantor are taking the lead with bold on-demand market data cloud initiatives.

NASDAQ OMX says it will provide on-demand Web services access to detailed historical Level 1 trade and quote data for all U.S.-listed securities. Tick data is increasingly used in quantitative environments for back testing of algorithmic trading strategies, but collecting and managing it can be onerous.

According to Randall Hopkins, NASDAQ OMX’s Senior Vice President of Global Data Products. “Today our customers spend a large amount on technology infrastructure, not the market data itself…we want to drastically cut data management costs by running the technology infrastructure on the cloud for our clients and delivering to them the data they need, when they need it, and how they need it.”

NASDAQ discusses it’s market data cloud initiative with Max Bowie
of Inside Market Data at the 2010 SIFMA Financial Services Technology Expo

CME Group plans to offer on-demand access to end-of-day OTC settlement, volume and open interest data to support markets available through CME ClearPort®, a set of OTC clearing services that provides neutral settlement prices across asset classes. CME ClearPort currently clears more than 500,000 contracts daily, including Credit Default Swaps (CDS), energy, metals, agricultural commodities and foreign currencies.

“With the ongoing development of our multiple OTC product and service offerings, and the need to deliver this data to customers with continued market transparency, the Xignite platform will be a quick and cost-effective way to get OTC pricing and reference data to our global market participants,” said Brian McElligott, Managing Director of Information Products at CME Group.

Pete Harris of the A-Team Group interviews CME Group, BG Cantor and Xignite.
The A-Team Group gave the cloud prime coverage in their recent Q2 issue,
and Pete is launching a new “Market Data Cloud” channel, so stay tuned to that.

BGCantor Market Data plans to use BGCantor On-Demand to provide an affordable solution to middle office asset managers and portfolio managers who require timely market data but do not require a full data feed. “Our customers depend on us to deliver the data they need, when they need it and using an innovative technology like web services we can provide even more flexibility,” said Bernie Weinstein, Executive Managing Director and head of BGCantor Market Data.

NASDAQ OMX, CME Group and BG Cantor have all partnered with Xignite to get their market data cloud initiatives off the ground (sorry, couldn’t resist).