PLUS-SX begins live operations with their Apama solution in December.

By using the Apama Market Surveillance and Monitoring solution accelerator, PLUS-SX can detect suspicious trading patterns in real-time. These suspicious trading patterns can often be a result of illegal activities such as insider trading, front running, and rogue algorithms, which helped trigger of 'Flash Crash' earlier this year.

Tony Harrop, CTO at PLUS-SX, said: "These days, with continuously changing markets and regulations, exchanges require technologies with the flexibility to rapidly adjust to new regulatory regimes. PLUS-SX is committed to differentiating itself with its compliance strategy. The Apama Progress Market Surveillance and Monitoring solution accelerator provides us with the best tools available to adapt to future changes in regulation."

To upgrade its surveillance capabilities from SMARTS, the incumbent supplier, the Exchange evaluated a number of 'off-the-shelf' market surveillance applications and complex event processing (CEP) products from several vendors before selecting the Apama solution. PLUS-SX also selected Progress Software so we could be more responsive to changing regulations, and as part of a cost reduction and efficiency program".

Harrop added: "We wanted to find a trade monitoring platform that provided us with a continuous, real-time view of client activity across the exchange and allow us to manage increased trade demands more efficiently."

Dr John Bates, Progress Software's CTO, commented: "In these challenging times of changing regulation, both market participants and the markets themselves must demonstrate that they can keep up to speed with changing regulations."

Bates continued: "PLUS-SX has created a world-class system that meets the needs of the impending regulatory restructure of the UK's financial services sector. The FSA, and its successor organisations, will be stepping up their capacitity to gather and analyse intelligence from external sources giving the real-time visibility and upgraded insight they need to be a robust player. The Progress Apama Market Surveillance and Monitoring accelerator provides PLUS-SX with the performance and flexibility to adapt to regulatory changes and realise the efficiency savings they are looking for."