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OnX and technology consortium announce new members

OnX and Technology Consortium Announce New Members; Set Sights on Expanded Trading Functions Offering Further Performance Benchmarking and Transparency Across The Trade Lifecycle.

ORONTO, Ontario and New York, NY – June 5, 2012 – OnX Enterprise Solutions, a leading provider of enterprise data center solutions, with Intel and fellow informal Technology Consortium members, today announced expansion of its testing of trading functions including Financial Information Exchange (FIX) protocol messaging routing and other functions along with additional technologies from new participants in the infrastructure layers.  FIX is the de facto global standard supporting trading across asset classes and geographies for a range of trading styles. The technology consortium, now a growing community of collaborating parties, also welcomes new members representing a cross section of technologies at the network interface controller (NIC), server and switch layers + alignment of trading applications vendors.  New members include HP, Mellanox, Gnodal, OnixS, TelX, among others.

Through mid-June, 1.0 tests will now be conducted on FIX engines, from the new members with additional 1.1 testing at the infrastructure layers of NIC, switch, CPU and server. Starting in late June and continuing through Q4 2012, the functional scope of testing will be extended as 2.0 designs from Etrading Software, which will focus on common high performance business use cases (such market data, DMA, OMS, EMS) across market data, pre- and post-trade workflows, starting with the FIX asset class.

The consortium’s initial focus was to design and test a high performance infrastructure to handle FIX Protocol messaging covering recognized interparty legs in the trade cycle. Results published in a January 2012 Research Paper showed the benefits of design with sub 10 microsecond roundtrip performance between the FIX engine and a simulated liquidity venue.  This report can be accessed at onx2017.bbidev.com.

Led by OnX Enterprise Solutions and Intel, the group’s charter members including Dell, Solarflare, Equinix, ETrading Software and Edge Technology Group are now joined by HP, Gnodal, and Mellanox. Infrastructure-founding FIX engine specialists Rapid Addition and B2BITS EPAM Systems Company are joined by OnixS, and Gatelab with applications, TelX for CoLo hosting and TS-Associates for precision instrumentation in measurement.

“We are delighted with the Consortium’s results which started in Q4 2011,” said David Blandford, OnX VP FSI Solutions. “The Research Report commented on new subjects which added value to the market’s focus.  We are seeing a multitude of initiatives from within the community momentum that we are creating – addressing optimum combinations of integrated technology and approaches to address evolving market practices. We believe that there is a market requirement for a full-service based value proposition of technology, application and managed service.”   Blandford continued, “OnX will focus on full co-located bundles for high-end trading which will insulate clients from technology complexity and enable agility to changing market conditions, converting costly Capex to a flexible monthly Opex charges. “

Sassan Danesh, managing partner for Etrading Software commented, “The consortium’s initial Research Paper demonstrated the competitive advantage to be gained through the deployment of an optimised next generation technology stack. We are excited to be working with OnX and Intel to define the version 2.0 set of performance benchmarks that will provide additional objective and trusted metrics based on real-world business trading scenarios today.”

Gordon Hughes, Alliance Director – FSI, Intel, “We are pleased to support the progress being made with the ongoing initiative of the trading technology and service consortium. Results to date have shown the power of collaborative infrastructure design and testing in real life environments, facilitated through the fasterLAB, which has provided the catalyst to bring parties together and move adoption forward. This has enabled the design and testing and the de risking of commercial combinations which can then be presented to the market as best of breed solutions.”

For more views on the direction of trading, click here to listen to industry leaders.  Click here for more information on the FIX Consortium and its work.