Opening Cross: The Perfect Storm—Cloud’s Reign Brewing at Last?
Early evangelists of “the cloud”—that loose term for virtual compute power and other capabilities—have been telling their story for 10 years or so, often to blank looks from then-junior reporters like myself. But it seems that now, as the term has permeated language and understanding from the retail level (see Microsoft’s “To the cloud!” TV ads) to the highest levels of the financial markets, cloud is set for stratospheric takeup.
Though this change has been on the radar for a while, the full potential of cloud is only now being realized. Early last year, independent consultant John Akbari wrote an Open Platform for Inside Market Data predicting heavy cloud on the horizon as firms looked to expand services while still reducing costs. Last month, a Bloomberg survey of chief information officers revealed a shift towards managed solutions, with 45 percent of respondents saying that cloud computing yielded the most return on investment over the past year, while a Gartner survey from January shows cloud computing and virtualization rising to CIOs’ first and second priorities, respectively, for 2011.
One reason for this is simple: the perfect storm created by the recent crisis in financial markets is causing firms to investigate lighter-weight technologies that allow them to do more without associated increases in spend—particularly smaller, buy-side firms without the resources and budgets of their bulge-bracket rivals. “Smaller firms are almost certainly going to have to look at things they can take as a service rather than acquiring any technology to install on-premise and manage themselves. And given that they are liable not to have too massive a budget for IT, much less the IT staff to support an entire on-premise infrastructure, I would expect them to be looking to get as much as they can as a service,” says Rik Turner, senior analyst at research firm Ovum.
But it’s not just smaller firms that can benefit: Stanley Young, chief executive of NYSE Technologies, which announced a cloud initiative to access data and on-demand processing power in NYSE Euronext’s datacenters last week, says it should appeal across the board. “We have 1,200 clients, and I would like to see all 1,200 sign up…. If any company in this business isn’t buying services like this in a year’s time, their shareholders should be asking why not,” Young says.
There are already plenty of companies playing in this space—from those providing managed services such as OptionsIT to on-demand data vendors like Xignite, to niche cloud providers like CloudSoft and InvestCloud, to the many who utilize cloud computing as a component of the services they provide, such as analytics vendor StatPro, whose new Revolution platform utilizes cloud delivery. But cloud has always suffered from a lack of understanding and from security concerns, especially in light of recent service outages in Amazon’s cloud—one of the largest, if not the largest provider of on-demand cloud computing (the moral of the story is, cloud isn’t the be-all and end-all: you still need redundancy and backup)—though that doesn’t seem to have dampened Wall Street’s current enthusiasm for the cloud.
Nor does the question of how a cloud is partitioned between public and private areas, with dedicated areas for specific companies and services. This is due in part to vendors like VMware—one of the partners enlisted by NYSE Technologies to build its own cloud computing and access service—whose virtualization management technology allows users to not just partition space, but assign dedicated machines—even down to the specific configuration required by clients.
And with firms’ appetite for increased flexibility and reduced spend, expect more people—not just the daydreamers—to be sticking their heads in the clouds in the coming years.
Only users who have a paid subscription or are part of a corporate subscription are able to print or copy content.
To access these options, along with all other subscription benefits, please contact info@waterstechnology.com or view our subscription options here: http://subscriptions.waterstechnology.com/subscribe
You are currently unable to print this content. Please contact info@waterstechnology.com to find out more.
You are currently unable to copy this content. Please contact info@waterstechnology.com to find out more.
Copyright Infopro Digital Limited. All rights reserved.
You may share this content using our article tools. Printing this content is for the sole use of the Authorised User (named subscriber), as outlined in our terms and conditions - https://www.infopro-insight.com/terms-conditions/insight-subscriptions/
If you would like to purchase additional rights please email info@waterstechnology.com
Copyright Infopro Digital Limited. All rights reserved.
You may share this content using our article tools. Copying this content is for the sole use of the Authorised User (named subscriber), as outlined in our terms and conditions - https://www.infopro-insight.com/terms-conditions/insight-subscriptions/
If you would like to purchase additional rights please email info@waterstechnology.com
More on Trading Tech
WatersTechnology latest edition
Check out our latest edition, plus more than 10 years of our best content.
Getting aggressive: Overbond uses AI to assess dealer axes
The fixed-income analytics specialist has developed a new tool to help buy-side firms decide if they’re getting a good price from their dealers.
TS Imagine integrates LTX’s pre-trade analytics tool
Users of the fixed-income EMS will now have access to LTX’s Liquidity Cloud tool, which provides a pre-trade score for the likelihood of trading success.
European exchanges turn to dark trading in battle for flow
The EU’s two biggest exchanges are launching dark pools this year. The apparent change in their stances on dark trading reflects a profound shift in equities markets.
After contentious Opra upgrades, vendors brace for a faster future
Upgrades to the datafeed widely used to gauge the current market price for options contracts went into effect in February after three separate delays, which market participants say were caused by persistent bandwidth issues at some important recipients.
The IMD Wrap: No more turf wars, or why CDOs should heed the Voice of the CTO
Max reviews how our recent Voice of the CTO series has implications for those beyond a firm’s technology function, and how communication and collaboration between tech, data, and leadership will deliver better results.
Dark horse: Deutsche Börse building dark pool
New functionality allowing exchange members to execute sweep trades comes hot on the heels of European rival Euronext launching its own dark pool.
Waters Wrap: The tough climb for startups
Anthony speaks with two seasoned technologists to better understand why startups have such a tough time getting banks and asset managers to sign on the dotted line.
Most read
- Women in Technology & Data Awards 2024: All the winners and why they won
- Witad Awards 2024: Above and beyond award (vendor)—Susan Bennett, Tradeweb
- Fighting FAIRR: Inside the bill aiming to keep AI and algos honest