Global Markets on Demand: Unified Infrastructure Required

The calls to trade across asset classes, across borders, and with varying levels of performance have grown to a near-deafening pitch. The prevailing method for answering these calls has been to establish specific, stand-alone trading infrastructures to match the requirements of specific strategies or tasks. The resulting complexity – from the development and maintenance of multiple implementations of trading infrastructures, particularly at the largest and most diverse trading firms – now serves as the leading impediment to achieving “global markets on demand”.

Before on demand access to all global markets can be achieved, unified trading infrastructure must be achieved. This means establishing trading infrastructure that is not only connected to all global markets, but can also provide the full spectrum of performance requirements called for in each of these markets. Furthermore, unified trading infrastructure means incorporating the data and process of OTC markets into that of the listed domain. In other words, solutions to address the concept of global markets on demand must include functionality for peer-to-peer publishing of customized, user-created data.

The key ingredient that allows for the unification of trading infrastructure is a concept that is widely known as data fabric. Data fabric accomplishes several key feats that are essential for unified infrastructure. The first is in-memory data virtualization which allows high-capacity, latency-sensitive datasets – those that are primarily related to market data – to be captured and temporarily stored in RAM as well as in multiple locations of RAM. Sometimes known as distributed caching, this new infrastructure architecture overcomes the leading need for multiple infrastructure implementations by providing the necessary data performance requirements on top of traditional data storage hardware. In this sense, data fabric becomes the first line of engagement for market data and replaces the legacy hub-and-spoke architecture which is the cause of data bottlenecks.

Data fabric also provides peer-to-peer publishing functionality by transforming end-users into “computational nodes” on the network, much in the same way that an exchange or liquidity venue or trading application is both a publisher and consumer of data. The most important aspect of this feature is the possibility to include customized, user-created datasets – like those found in OTC markets – on the same infrastructure as the standardized listed markets.

Finally, data fabric streamlines the vastly disparate application programming interfaces (APIs) which are a key cause of complexity and cost when attempting to achieve global markets on demand by any other means.

Above all, data fabric – and the resulting benefits it provides for unified trading infrastructure – represents a revolutionary catalyst to usher in an Age of Interconnectedness; a period when markets, systems and users can engage in a level of communications never known before – and all on the same underlying infrastructure. With this new found level of efficiency, performance, and geographically independent communications, numerous new and untapped opportunities for process automation, product innovation, market transparency, and a broad spectrum of other improved communications will be unleashed. With data fabric and unified infrastructure, these capabilities are right around the corner.

The TABB Group Study on Global Markets on Demand: Unified Infrastructure Required

This 18 page report explores the roadmap to achieving greater ease of trading in all global markets by adopting new infrastructure architecture for trading firms. The report discusses how the wide variance in communications performance characteristics required in trading large and diversified trading firms has spawned multiple implementations of trading infrastructures resulting in massive complexity and costs and which has rendered the legacy hub-and-spoke data storage architecture virtually unsustainable. Furthermore, the report outlines the key functionality of data fabric and how these features offer – for the first time – the possibility of unified trading infrastructure and the potential to usher in an Age of Interconnectedness, the benefits from which will be unprecedented.