Rob Daly: Mining Cloud for Its Silver Lining
I began covering the IT industry in the mid-1990s for a PC Magazine offshoot that was sent to about a fifth of the flagship magazine’s readers, and provided semi-monthly comparative lab-based reviews of products that were near and dear to the hearts of network administrators everywhere.
For a history grad who didn’t know Ethernet from a token ring, it was a dive into the deep end of the IT pool.
The first set of reviews I fact-checked were on 10 Mbps Ethernet network interface cards (NICs). Next were Ethernet hubs and routers, and then Fast Ethernet—which, at the time, blazed at a rate of 100 Mbps. I also looked at firewalls, load balancers and high-performance computing (HPC).
As the internet began to boom, the publication did fewer infrastructure reviews as the technology for NICs, hubs and routers matured, and vendors consolidated. The focus began to switch to the applications running on the infrastructure, as well as how to manage it. From a technology perspective we saw fewer CD jukebox vendors as data storage moved away from CDs to servers’ hard disk drives.
Back to the Future
Over the past few years, with the rise of cloud computing, I’m beginning to see a similar trend happening again. This month, NYSE Euronext is supposed to take its Capital Markets Community Cloud (CMCC) live in the vendor’s Mahwah, NJ, datacenter. By providing a hosted environment and access to a number of industry-specific applications and data sets, NYSE Technologies is going to take a lot of pressure off clients’ budgets by moving computing and storage resources into a managed environment.
I’m loathe to call these services “cloud” since many deal with providing dedicated hardware resources as opposed to ramping up virtual computing resources on the fly. Still, I wonder how important delivering these services in a cloud environment is for the end user. As long as the provider meets its service level agreements (SLAs) and keeps its services competitively priced, I bet that most end-users would not care whether it is delivered in a cloud or as a hosted application run on beefy Sparc-powered systems.
How these applications and services are delivered is up to the individual vendors and they should have figured out the most economical way to deliver them. From the client side, the biggest issue will be interoperability. These managed services providers have developed nice walled-garden environments by reaching out to various third-party providers to fill out their service stack. But unless a firm plans to be tied into one provider, interoperability is a must. Considering that a good number of firms manage between 10 and 100 data feeds, and a significant subset manage over 100 feeds according to a recent poll, one-stop shopping is not an option.
Pricing Arbitrage
Moving data and applications between cloud or managed, hosted environments is not just about pricing arbitrage between the service vendors, but access to the vast amount of data residing in their respective clouds.
With the CMCC and Elektron, NYSE Technologies and Thomson Reuters, respectively, plan to store versions of their historical data in the cloud as part of their offerings. It makes sense to have the applications that need to consume that data move between the various environments.
Until we have this application mobility between cloud environments, we will have the virtual equivalent of the CD jukebox. Sure, it works, but the industry is not getting close to the true potential of cloud computing.
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
Liquidnet sees electronic future for gray bond trading
TP Icap’s gray market bond trading unit has more than doubled transactions in the first quarter of 2024.
This Week: HKEx's new derivatives platform; GoldenSource; Quonian-SimCorp, and more
A summary of some of the latest financial technology news.
Chris Edmonds takes the reins at ICE Fixed Income and Data Services
Edmonds is now leading ICE’s fixed income and data business as the rush to provide better data and analytics in fixed income builds.
Systematic tools gain favor in fixed income
Automation is enabling systematic strategies in fixed income that were previously reserved for equities trading. The tech gap between the two may be closing, but differences remain.
Waters Wrap: Examining the changing EMS landscape
After LSEG’s decision to sunset Redi, Anthony examines what might lie ahead for the EMS space.
This Week: Clear Street, AXA/AWS, TD Bank/Google Cloud and more
A summary of the latest financial technology news.
LSEG to sunset Redi EMS in favor of Tora
Sources say competitors will look to seize on the decision to win over Redi’s sizeable US client base.
Most read
- Chris Edmonds takes the reins at ICE Fixed Income and Data Services
- Deutsche Börse democratizes data with Marketplace offering
- Waters Wavelength Podcast: Broadridge’s Joseph Lo on GPTs