Transatlantic exchange Nyse Euronext has launched a new hosted 'Community Platform', designed to provide customers with "plug-in" access to products and services from external technology vendors.
Sam Johnson, EVP, Nyse Euronext, says the introduction of the SFTI Community Platform "marks a major innovation in the development, distribution and accessibility of financial services technology".
"In developing this system, we wanted to join the largest collection of broker dealers and liquidity providers with the most inventive, value added software developers," says Johnson.
Massachusetts-based Progress Software and New York-based UNX are the first vendors to deliver products over the hosted platform, which can be accessed by users of Nyse Euronext's secure financial transaction infrastructure (SFTI) network.
Progress Software says it has inked a deal that will enable traders to access its Apama complex event processing (CEP) platform via the hosted service. The Apama system provides CEP capabilities for algorithmic trading, risk management and order routing.
Commenting on the move, John Bates, founder and general manager of the Apama division of Progress Software, says: "The richness of the Apama platform will provide traders with the algorithmic trading tools needed to continuously seek out the right liquidity and develop and execute trading strategies more rapidly than their competitors."
Meanwhile Nyse Euronext says UNX is joining the SFTI Community Platform in response to the needs of trading floor brokers. UNX will integrate its MetaBook product with the Broker Booth Support System (BBSS) hand-held devices, enabling brokers to route orders from their hand-helds to other markets for the first time, says the exchange. This will greatly expand floor brokers' ability to locate and access liquidity on behalf of customers, says Nyse Euronext.
UNX says this offering is a major step forward in allowing floor brokers to access liquidity in other markets as well as giving others electronic access to the substantial liquidity that trades on the floor.
The managed platform has been launched by the Nyse Euronext Advanced Trading Solutions unit which houses the exchange's commercial technology offering, including the SFTInetwork and systems acquired when the exchange bought out Matchpoint Trading, Transact Tools and Wombat Software.