We had a great time at the recent 10th Annual High Performance Computing Linux for Wall Street event in New York on April 8, 2013. This year’s HPC conference focused on speed and cutting-edge advances in network visibility, analytics, and instrumentation. Some of the brightest minds in the financial services industry were in attendance to learn about and discuss the latest technology innovations that help financial trading firms gain a competitive edge.

I was fortunate to take part in a panel at this year’s conference which discussed how the acquisition and monitoring of data can enable firms to manage risk and compliance in the enterprise. The panel was comprised of moderator Paul Jameson, Managing Director, Global Financial Services, Cisco Systems; Donal Byrne, CEO, Corvil; Jean Hill, Managing Director, Alvarez & Marsal; and Bruce Cooper, CTO of Liquid Holdings and COO of Green Mountain Analytics.

We covered a lot of information during the conference, but our panel discussion addressed these key topics:

• Challenges and approaches to establishing low latency at scale.
• Gaining and applying intelligence to optimize trade strategy execution through analytics and instrumentation.
• The evolving importance of programmability within the network and software defined networks evolution and application in high performance trading. Read More »

Tags: analytics, financial markets, HPC, low latency, trading fabric

Today, April 8, 2013, the brightest of Wall Street are meeting at the 10^th Annual High Performance Computing Linux for Wall Street event in New York to learn about the latest technology innovations that give financial trading firms a competitive edge. With network latency achieving speeds of less than 50 nanoseconds, this year’s event focuses not only on speed but also on cutting-edge advances in network visibility, analytics and instrumentation. One way Cisco is helping traders gain a competitive edge in this area is by offloading the gathering of analytics data to the network devices, and working with industry leading monitoring firms like Corvil and TS-Associates to decode these new sources of data.

No doubt, high performance trading systems are becoming faster, processing more data than ever before. Network performance is of paramount importance in high performance trading markets where obtaining and acting on real-time equities, options and other financial market information, nanoseconds faster than competitors, may be worth millions of dollars. While complex trading analysis and risk mitigation still need to be performed outside the network layer, significant cost savings and scale advantages can be obtained by leveraging embedded intelligence in the network to enable key functions such as fabric congestion monitoring and intelligent traffic mirroring. Read More »

Tags: acitve buffer monitoring, Cisco, financial markets, Financial Services, HPC, HPT, HPTF, network latency

Financial markets today have become so dependent on well-designed technology architecture in support of growing automated trading business. I was recently part of a webinar centered on discovering how optimized latency performance, mitigation of microbursts, traffic filtering and analysis, and precise timing and synchronization are beneficial to all participants in the trading value chain.

The webinar was hosted by Wall Street & Technology, entitled, “Enabling High-Performance Trading Alpha: Beyond Low-Latency to Sustained Performance.” If you weren’t able to make it, register here to view a recording.

During the discussion, I was joined by some great minds in the financial services sector including Alex Tabb, Partner, TABB Group and Paul Jameson, Senior Director, Financial Services, Cisco. We discussed how high-performance trading fabric architecture and innovations like Cisco Algo Boost and the Cisco Nexus 3548 can help financial firms address challenges and capture opportunities in today’s financial markets. Here are a few key take-aways from the webinar I would like to highlight. Read More »

Tags: Algo Boost, financial markets, Financial Services, high performance trading, High Performance Trading Fabric, HPT, HPTF, low latency, microburst

As global financial markets become more interconnected and diverse, trading environments have become increasingly dynamic and responsive to real-time conditions. It is important for participants across the trading value chain to capture new business opportunities while reducing risks associated with today’s financial markets.

Register today for our complimentary 60-minute Webinar on, Jan. 22 at 11:30 a.m. ET, hosted by Wall Street & Technology, to discover how a High-Performance Trading Fabric architecture and new innovations like Cisco Algo-Boost and the Cisco Nexus 3548 can help financial firms address challenges and capture opportunities in today’s financial markets.

Join our roundtable executives: Alex Tabb, Partner, TABB Group; Paul Jameson, Senior Director, Financial Services, Cisco; and Dave Malik, Senior Director, Solutions Architecture, Cisco Advanced Services.

The roundtable will discuss: Read More »

Tags: Algo Boost, financial markets, Financial Services, High Performance Trading Fabric, innovation, Nexus 3548

For the last decade I have been fortunate to work with leading buy-side, sell-side and execution venues from each major money center around the world.  This has been especially rewarding as financial markets have become so dependent on well-designed technology architecture in support of the exponentially growing automated trading business.

As competition grows more intense with firms fighting to capture order flow and optimize liquidity, I have discovered a common set of business imperatives that resonate with most players in the space, including:

• An ongoing requirement for ‘Being FASTER than the Competition’.
• Increasing Order Flow and Liquidity to help grow revenues.
• Ability to have greater risk management insight in the trading lifecycle due to Regulatory requirements such as 15c3-5.
• Fast Market Data Delivery and Distribution to help Accelerate Price Discovery for participant firm and exchanges.
• Lastly, capturing key opportunities during Volatility is vital to the business.

Financial Services is an important vertical for Cisco and we have been focusing our R&D investments to optimize the value and benefit we deliver to financial markets.  This has resulted in the development of our High Performance Trading Fabric, a comprehensive architecture designed to optimize global electronic trading by addressing computing, routing, switching, optical, and trade flow intelligence in an integrated fashion that supports the multi-participant electronics trading lifecycle.

Our latest innovation results from the direct input my colleagues and I have received from our financial markets customers.  This week we are announcing Cisco’s Algo Boost technology, integrated into our new Nexus 3548 switch platform.  Algo Boost provides unprecedented performance, visibility and control for greater business agility and intelligence to allow firms to capture alpha across their trading operations.

I wanted to share a few benefit examples that are very relevant to the financial markets firms that I work with on a daily basis. Read More »

Tags: Algo Boost, Buy-Side, Co-location providers, Exchanges, financial markets, high performance trading, High Performance Trading Fabric, HPT, innovation, low latency, Nanoseconds, Nexus 3548, Proximity Providers, Sell-Side, ultra-low latency