For all the hoopla about cloud computing, it’s easy to forget that the idea of companies placing their critical IT systems and storage into data centers that they didn’t own—as well as the idea that the term “cloud computing” itself, would have been dismissed as ludicrous as recently as five years ago.
Yet that’s precisely what’s happened in capital markets, in which data centers, as a byproduct of the rise of electronic trading, have eclipsed trading floors as the venues where most transactions get executed.
Telx, for example, operates 17 data centers across the U.S., including in New York and northern New Jersey, Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas and Los Angeles.
“Fragmentation is very much a reality,” said Shawn Kaplan, general manager of financial services at Telx. “There are more than 10 equity exchanges and 40 dark pools, so connectivity is critical.”
In January, Telx completed its purchase of 100 Delawanna Avenue, the location of its NJR2 datacenter, from Mountain Development Corporation and the achievement of Tier III status from Uptime Institute for its NJR3 datacenter, also located on the Clifton campus.
The purchase of the property allows Telx to develop an advanced datacenter campus and future technology center for the evaluation and development of new data center products and services for clients.
“A big reason why the financial services marketplace has realized the benefit of our carrier connection facilities is that our data centers are connecting to these 50 venues, which generates tremendous benefits for the industry in a fragmented environment,” said Kaplan. “The cost of locating in every exchange center is exorbitant. Some very high tech automated firms that are trying to arbitrage the buy side’s shortcoming in technology are trying to do that. Cost continues to escalate and profits are down.”
Janney Capital Management, based in Pittsburgh, has gone live with iPM Cloud (Intelligent Portfolio Management), a cloud-based portfolio management platform from service provider INDATA.
“We were very pleased with the conversion process to iPM Cloud,” said Dwight Cowden, vice president at Janney Capital Management, in a statement. “INDATA’s technical staff worked closely with our IT organization to deliver a timely solution in order to meet our deadlines. Now that we have iPM Cloud in place we are able to benefit organizationally in a number of ways including efficiently tying multiple offices into our iPM portfolio management and OMS platform.”
In addition to improving data management, compliance and disaster recovery capabilities, one of the benefits of a cloud platform is the ability to effectively access mission-critical systems from different locations,” said David Csiki, managing director at INDATA. “Firms like Janney Capital Management understand the importance of choosing the right technology partners and we were pleased that we were able to assist them in meeting their business goals via iPM Cloud.”