Cloud9 focuses on flexibility to deliver a unique trader voice experience

Michael Lynch, chief product officer of Symphony, discusses Cloud9’s win in the WatersTechnology Sell­-Side Technology Awards 2025, including Cloud9’s key differentiators and the recent launch of the firm’s mobile app.

Cloud9, a subsidiary of Symphony, won Best sell-side trading communication system in the Sell-Side Technology Awards 2025. What is the significance of this achievement given the evolution of Cloud9 as a platform and business?   

Michael Lynch, chief product officer, Symphony: Winning a Sell-Side Technology Award is important for Cloud9. For those not familiar with the firm, it was founded in 2014, and the first community created around the product was in the commodities and energy space with corporates, trading desks and brokerages. But, since it joined the Symphony family in 2021, there has been a huge focus on expanding that market, focusing on banks and brokerages, and growing the platform’s reach into top-tier banks. This award is validation that our strategy is working; our customers and users are responding to it and finding that it helps solve their problems on a day-to-day basis.

Cloud9 is by no means the only trading communication system serving the sell side. How does the platform differentiate itself from other similar offerings on the market, and what do you see as its ‘killer’ functions and features?   

Michael Lynch: At its root, Cloud9 stands out from the other providers in this space by virtue of its modern approach to trader voice [communication]. Most people think of the turrets that sit on a trading desk, and a lot of those products start with the physical hardware and then the physical telephony lines that connect trading desks.

Starting when it did in 2014, Cloud9 has taken a fundamentally different cloud-native approach—there is no on-premises infrastructure and there’s nothing the client has to host on our behalf. Also, Cloud9 is a software application, so it can run on the user’s desktop, although we have a hardware device that can be connected into. It’s a fundamentally modern approach to the trader voice experience and closely aligns with the way the broader communication market is moving with more cloud-based technologies—in both the voice space and more generally.

Why is that important? And, when we mention the cloud, what does that mean for the user? It means flexibility. We all remember the days when you needed a disaster recovery site but, with Cloud9, users can work from home, in the office or on the go, and there’s flexibility in how the application can be deployed. We provide the technology teams with far more tools to manage their deployment of Cloud9. So, just having that kind of flexibility, at the end-user level and also at the technology infrastructure level, sets us apart from everyone else in terms of the nimbleness that our customers can now experience in a trader voice platform.

Cloud9 recently announced it would be launching a mobile version of the platform, which is already being trialed with some of the firm’s customers. What was the thinking behind this move and how does the mobile app differ from the desktop platform? Given that each has its own functionality, what does it enable its users to do they couldn’t have before its introduction? 

Michael Lynch: I used the words flexibility and nimbleness to describe our trader voice platform, but our mobile app takes that to another level. What we are already really good at is allowing our customers to work from their trading desks, but also, as needed, to work from a home office setup. Our mobile app connects those two experiences for our users, when they’re on their commute into the desk, when out to a client lunch or in between other activities. Being able to stay connected to the voice flow on the desk when things are moving the way they have been moving in the markets lately is critical.

That also aligns with what we have chosen not to do, which is to give users a full, all-singing, all-dancing trader voice product on their phone. That’s for a different screen size and different user needs. So we’ve designed the mobile app with that in mind and focused on the user on the go, transitioning between different places when they’re off the desk, even though they still need to quickly connect in.

The way we’ve achieved this is by delivering two modes—mobile mode, which is when you don’t need to listen to every call or you don’t want your phone ringing all the time but you want to be able to see notifications of what’s coming into the desk and then jump in if you need to or join an important client call. The other mode is full trader voice mode, where you can have all the voice activity and calls.

So, by giving our users two different modes, we’re giving them control over how they can experience the trading activity on the desk, even when they’re not there. We think this is really important and the early feedback from our customers shows that we’re on the right track.

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