Wall Street & Technology: Blog

Adobe, GemStone to Speed Global Workflows, Document Sharing

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 16:27:09 -0500

As Wall Street firms continue to open new offices in foreign countries and to outsource around the globe, one challenge for IT departments is to make sure that work, data and documents flow quickly and smoothly among widespread offices and data centers. Adobe and GemStone are announcing today a joint solution designed to meet this challenge: they�ve embedded GemStone�s GemFire data virtualization software, which harnesses the memory resources of many computers to speed up data retrieval and improve scalability and fault tolerance, into a version of Adobe�s LiveCycle workflow and document management software.

Is a Low-Energy Consumption Chip Alternative on the Horizon?

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:04:38 -0500

This isn't a blog about adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs). Rather, its about a newer type of chip technology from ARM Holdings, a UK-based company, that has the potential to lower energy use and extend battery life in smaller devices. Will the technology find its way to PCs and servers? And should Intel be worried?

Wall Street Firms Ramping Up HPC for Risk, Portfolio Analysis

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 10:36:11 -0500

A survey of high-level IT executives on Wall Street recently completed by Microsoft and KRC Research found that firms are facing increased demands to run real-time market risk analysis (25%), middle-office risk analytics (34%) and portfolio-related calculations such as rebalancing and hedging strategies (42%). These tasks all call for high-performance computing resources, such as hardware accelerators, fast databases and data grids. The respondents reported �a lot or some� demand for HPC to handle real-time market risk analysis (51%), middle-office risk analytics (50%) and portfolio-related calculations (54%).

Credit Suisse Adopts Data Latency Monitor; CodeStreet Rolls Out New Latency Monitoring Tool

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 16:54:11 -0500

As we noted in April and as Ivy Schmerken noted in her story in the SIFMA daily newspapers we put out, there�s a promising market forming around data latency monitoring tools for Wall Street firms, tools that measure and track precisely how long it�s taking market data to travel from exchange to algorithmic trading application and alert managers when latency problems occur. Such tools can help a firm make sure that its trading programs can react instantly to market changes. There were two more data latency monitoring announcements at the SIFMA show that we didn't have time to include in our earlier coverage this week.

Mitsubishi UFJ Securities Rates Group Getting A Tech Makeover

Wed, 28 May 2008 13:45:45 -0500

The rates trading group at Mitsubishi UFJ Securities, part of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (the largest financial institution in the world in total assets), is putting new technology behind its approach to relative value pricing and dissemination of market data. The group, which was formed in March 2006 and now employs 50 people, is installing a real-time tick database and low-latency price distribution technology.

High-Performance Server Brings Low Latency to Java Apps

Tue, 20 May 2008 11:36:52 -0500

Java�s popularity � according to IDC, more than $11 billion, or 20% of worldwide server spend, was devoted to Java servers in 2005 and analysts estimate that number is growing 15-20% annually � is sweeping the Street, at least according to anecdotal evidence. �There are four areas in which we�ve succeeded in the last 18 months: derivatives trading, risk analysis, hedge funds and foreign exchange,� reports Ram Appalaraju, vice president of marketing at Azul Systems, maker of a Java acceleration appliance used by many large Wall Street firms. �The reason they prefer Java is the cost of development in Java is a lot cheaper than any other programming environment.�

Sybase Launches Shared Data Platform For Trade Data Analytics

Mon, 12 May 2008 12:45:29 -0500

Sybase this morning announced a shared data service intended to enable all parties who deal with market data � traders, quantitative analysts, portfolio managers, risk managers, compliance officers and others � to work from the same page.

Virtual Storage and Memory Appliance Combo the Latest Approach to Low Latency

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 11:57:17 -0500

For those on board the advancing trend on Wall Street to virtualize data centers and computing in general, the announcement from Violin and FalconStor this week, that they are offering a virtual storage server bundled with a fast memory appliance, should be interesting. The companies say that for $300 per gigabtye, their storage servers and memory units can stream data at speeds of two gigabytes per second and beyond, accelerating applications 10 to 50 times, while providing the benefits of virtualized storage.

Network Accelerator Makes Ethernet Networks Infiniband-Like

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 17:47:51 -0500

If yours is like many Wall Street firms, you'd like to upgrade the one-gigabit Ethernet networks in your data centers to speed up applications, but you're not sure you want to make the leap to an exotic alternative like Infiniband or Fibre Channel. Startup company Teak Technologies offers a radically different idea: replace your end-of-row network switches with a layer of small, local switches that fit directly into racks or blades and, according to Teak, can accelerate an Ethernet network, save money and simplify network management.

Small Flood of New Data Latency Monitors

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 13:40:48 -0500

Over the last month and a half, a slew of vendors have introduced trade data latency monitoring tools, to help exchanges, brokerage houses and buy-side firms find, detect and eliminate the causes of trade data delays.

Column-Based Databases Making A Wall Street Comeback

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 18:41:44 -0500

The last time I met with Sybase, it was back when the big three database vendors were Informix, Oracle and Sybase � remember the 90s? This week, Gavin Quinn, FSI business development manager at Sybase, says the company is seeing a resurgence of interest in its high-speed, column-based databases among hedge funds and financial institutions.

Vhayu Offers Real-Time and Historical Order Book Analysis

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 10:49:47 -0500

As order books get bigger � the Tabb Group recently estimated that in just equities and options, the volume of market data messages across the global exchanges will soar from under four billion messages per day in 2006 to nearly 130 billion per day by 2010, as the number and variety of trading venues increases, as trades become smaller (e.g. 100 shares per order), as cancels and replacements accelerate, and as Reg NMS and MiFID make it necessary for firms to prove best execution, the need for an engine that can process and store that order book data efficiently becomes greater.