Arcontech Bows Price Consolidation Cache

UK-based data technology vendor Arcontech has developed a data transformation system, dubbed CityVisionCache, which will enable customers to consolidate pricing feeds from multiple vendors for display on trading floor desktop terminals.

The service is available as an additional feature within the vendor’s CityVision suite of market data services, and combines existing functionality, such as the real-time data store of its CityVision caching distributor, the RMDS (Reuters Market Data System) connectivity from its RFA (Reuters Foundation Architecture) Publisher, connectivity to other vendor systems from its Multi-Vendor Contribution System, and an audit trail from the contribution server, says Arcontech chief executive Andrew Miller.

As a result, the cache—a product of Arcontech’s adapter strategy (IMD, Oct. 10, 2011)—can store data from multiple sources in a normalized form. “While the adaptors provide the connections to and from different inputs and outputs, the cache puts that to use for data collection and redistribution,” Miller says.

The cache features a built-in vendor contribution capability that means that customers can use the product in conjunction with market data systems from traditional data terminal providers to replace legacy distribution and contributions systems.

For example, CityVision Cache can be used in combination with Thomson Reuters Enterprise Platform for Real-Time (formerly known as RMDS) as an alternative to Thomson Reuters’ Microsoft Windows-based ConteX contributions system—originally developed by Gissing Software, which Reuters acquired in 2008 (IMD, Jan. 4, 2008)—for delivery of contributed data on over-the-counter assets, Miller says.

“This is a neat solution for many requirements, and has the advantage of running on Solaris and Linux as well as Windows, which is not popular in the banks’ machine rooms. Our solution is then scalable to a full-blown distributed contributions system for more sophisticated requirements,” he adds.

Migration Mitigation
Sources say CityVisionCache also makes it technically possible to publish contributed data from RMDS users to a Bloomberg Terminal, and to serve as a replacement for Thomson Reuters’ Data Transformation System (DTS), which the vendor is phasing out and will replace with the Advanced Transformation System in June—to the chagrin of some firms, who say they would rather remain on DTS but cannot run the risk of using an unsupported platform.

Miller declines to confirm these capabilities, or whether anyone is using the product in either scenario, but says the cache could replace any legacy system relatively simply. “We have a utility to transfer data from one to the other and to clean up ‘stale’ data on the way,” he adds.