Savvis Connects with Chi-X Canada and Turquoise MTF

Savvis Inc. is announcing connectivity to Chi-X Canada, a major alternative trading system in Canada, and the Turquoise multilateral trading facility (MTF) in Europe, in response to customer demand for low-latency access to liquidity venues.

“This is a continuation of our adding exchange connectivity on a global basis to our network,” said Varghese Thomas, Savvis VP, Financial Services Business Unit, in an interview with Advanced Trading last week. In November, Savvis announced connectivity with Nasdaq OMX Group, BATS, CME Group, Direct Edge and the London Stock Exchange. According to Varghese, Turquoise was one of the remaining ATSs requested by clients, he said.

In Canada, Savvis already had the TSX (Toronto Stock Exchange), Alpha ATS, Pure and Omega ATS. “Chi-X Canada was one of the ATSs our clients were requesting,” said Thomas. Savvis is covering the Pan European market for MTFs that have come out including BATS Europe, Nasdaq OMX Europe and Chi-X Europe. BATS Europe hosts its trading engine in Savvis’ data center in London

“We’ve taken all the latency out of these markets and providing the exchange connections,” said Thomas. Customers would access the exchange’s products both for their market data as well as trade execution.

Savvis offers three levels of low latency connectivity to financial exchanges and liquidity venues. The choice depends on the firm’s location and business model,” explained Thomas.

For Turquoise in London, Savvis offers Exchange Express for low-latency access. This works if the firm is located in the same region as the trading venue, such as in metro New York, Chicago or London, then firms take the Savvis Exchange Express connections, a private managed global financial network with direct connections to each exchange via Metro Ethernet. If the customer were located outside the region, in the states or Asia, they would take the Savvis Community of Interest Network (COIN), which offers low latency exchange connectivity via Savvis’ private, managed global financial networks. “If you are anywhere in the globe and want access to Chi-X Canada or Turquoise, you’d come over the COIN network,” Thomas explained. Savvis also offers proximity hosting which is when both the exchange’s and the customers’ trading systems are collocated within a Savvis data center. “Proximity Hosting is when you’re in the same colocation as the exchange trading engine,” said Thomas.

With the trend toward outsourcing IT infrastructure and the market the way they are, Savvis is seeing a lot of demand from customers to continue to add connections and to continue to provide access to them.

Conversely, for the exchanges, it’s another way to expand their footprint to the market, said Thomas. Customers benefit because Savvis has mapped out the fiber miles, the telco carriers in the regions and picked the ones that have the lowest latency to those markets, said Thomas.

Ivy is Editor-at-Large for Advanced Trading and Wall Street & Technology. Ivy is responsible for writing in-depth feature articles, daily blogs and news articles with a focus on automated trading in the capital markets. As an industry expert, Ivy has reported on a myriad ... View Full Bio