Exegy Conceives Appliance "Family"

Exegy chairman and chief executive Jim O'Donnell says he expects clients to ask the vendor to add firms' proprietary applications to the same hardware appliance that runs Exegy's ticker plant—such as a proprietary algorithm running on a separate server downstream—especially when dealing with co-location of applications for low-latency trading.

O'Donnell says that to gain advantage, "you have to be able to capture data into a persistent database very quickly."

As a result, he says the vendor has plans for a "family" of products that can exploit the low-latency and high-throughput technology of Exegy's ticker plant. Potential applications include those covering compliance and risk management, he says, but declines to comment on any specific examples planned for development.

"We are looking at [hardware] acceleration [for] all pain points of the trading cycle," says chief scientist and architect Scott Parsons. "You can characterize the trading cycle as bringing market data in, taking a view of the market, deciding what strategy to take, and taking action—all those points are potential targets for this type of computing… There's still a lot of potential left in the box."

Parsons says that specific applications will be developed based on market demand, which will initially come from client feedback. Exegy says it will limit the number of firms to which it provides ticker plants to 21 clients in its first two years, which it will allow to drive development of its next set of products, though the vendor will then be able to market those other appliances to other potential customers.