The Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) has launched a new Infrastructure-as-a-Services (IaaS) offering, ASX Colo OnDemand.
The IaaS connects customers to infrastructure hosted in the Australian Liquidity Centre (ALC), a data center that operates Australia’s financial markets.
Available as of May 22, the IaaS is built on Beek’s Financial Cloud Group’s Exchange Cloud, and aims to offer on-demand private cloud computing and high-performance trading infrastructure within the data center.
This will enable customers seeking to trade on the ASX to no longer need their own and operate infrastructure, and is hoped to lower the barrier to entry to the Australian financial markets.
Jamie Crank, group executive of technology and data at ASX, said: “This new offering puts the needs of our customers first and has the potential to benefit an underserved market segment, such as buy-side firms, niche and smaller broker and investment firms, and emerging software providers. In launching ASX Colo OnDemand, we can cater for businesses of all sizes to access the benefits of co-locating in the ALC.
“This solution, focused on making it easier for our customers to connect to Australia’s financial markets, creates a more convenient, affordable, and scalable option that takes away the burden of businesses managing their own infrastructure.”
Gordon McArthur, CEO of Beeks, added: “We are delighted to welcome ASX as an Exchange Cloud client and underpin their new innovative Colocation on Demand service. This collaboration demonstrates ASX’s commitment to helping their customers access the most liquid markets in Australia and beyond, through secure, scalable, and flexible infrastructure. By adopting our Exchange Cloud solution, ASX can provide enhanced connectivity and analytics while giving market participants greater control over their trading environments.”
Beeks Financial Cloud Group is a cloud computing and connectivity provider for financial markets, offering low-latency (IaaS) to retail and institutional traders in foreign exchange, financial futures, equities, fixed income, and cryptocurrency asset classes. The company was founded in 2011, and is headquartered in the UK.
The ALC, according to the ASX website, houses over 100 financial organisations, including Buy and Sell Side Firms, Alternative Liquidity Venues, Independent Software Vendors, as well as Infrastructure and Network Service Providers. Like many stock exchange data centers, it gives all customers “equal footing and access” to the trading platform by keeping cable lengths the same, regardless of position in the data center.
The data center is located in the Gore Hill Business Park in Artarmon, near Sydney, which is also home to data centers operated by the likes of Keppel Data Centres, and iseek. DCD previously reported that the Liquidity data center was built as part of the second phase of consolidation resulting from the merger of the Australian Stock Exchange and Sydney Futures Exchange. In 2012, ASX leased two floors of the ALC to a Singaporean Company.
Read more about the data centers supporting our world’s stock exchanges, and the ins and outs of high-frequency trading here.