Velocimetrics Launches "One-Stop Solution" for Data Tracking, Analytics, Quality Management

With VMX EndToEnd, the vendor has set out to build "a full tracking and analytics solution," says Steve Rodgers, head of engineering at Velocimetrics.

"Until now, if you wanted to do monitoring and instrumentation from the packet-layer, capturing data from the network and inside applications, performing network, market data, middleware and business analytics, you needed multiple solutions,"plus it would be difficult to create a consolidated view of what was going on, Rodgers says, adding that Velocimetrics previously had some solutions that addressed parts of this spectrum, but not an integrated product. "We now have a consolidated platform that allows you to do modular deployment to suit all the different business cases," he says.

VMX EndToEnd aims to eradicate the use of multiple vendor solutions, necessitated because no vendor covers the entire spectrum of data capture and analysis, Rodgers says. "Customers need to be able to track all these multiple sets of data, and often find they need to deploy multiple vendor solutions to do so. Bringing this together in a single view is difficult," and involves investing in staff to manage each different solution and terminology, plus the "different silos of data" and contracts that each solution involves, he adds. "It's not just the technical requirements; it's about managing things like business relationships between each of the vendors."

For example, clients can use the platform to trace the exact path taken by every single market data tick or trade from beginning to end, to detect the cause-and-effect relationships that exist between different data elements. The chain of events can be tied together, analyzed and recorded in real time. Users can also use EndToEnd to gain a real-time understanding of the quality of all market data streams, down to the individual instrument level.

The new platform will allow customers to select the precise items of functionality they need, and to add more modules over time. These include the new version of Velocimetrics' Market Data Quality solution, with machine-learning techniques, which the vendor released in February. This will allow users to perform business-level analysis on the market data by "not just looking at the fact that your market data is arriving in sequence and you're not losing packets, but looking at the pricing, looking for anomalies or delays within the feed itself. If you're a market-maker, there is certain information that you can extract from the system. It might be being able to identify that the data you received was delayed by your consolidated feed provider for some reason. This gives you that insight," Rodgers says.

A key feature, Rodgers says, is the integration between the TipOff and Application Tap─acquired from now-defunct data technology and latency monitoring provider TS-Associates─and Velocimetrics' proprietary products, though he adds that EndToEnd will not replace any existing products, and the vendor will not be "ushering" anyone onto the platform, but will instead highlight how it "builds on top of what we already have."

"It's not a case of replacing things.... We're not stopping supporting any customers at the moment that already have Velocimetrics. What [EndToEnd] provides is a full spectrum of functionality─things like detailed network data capture and application data-in a fully integrated way, where clients can come and pick and choose which modules they want," Rodgers adds.