Client Xignite‘s CEO, Stephane Dubois, comments on the company’s cloud-delivered market data that makes it easier for firms to manage entitlements across multiple data vendors.
Cloud-delivered market data was once ‘over my dead body’ territory for institutional market data managers, who understandably fretted aloud about performance, security and licence compliance issues. But Covid-19 has forced those same data managers to confront the fact that many of their professional market data users are able to work from home (WFH), in turn driving financial firms to question whether the pandemic could be the catalyst for a rethink of their expensive-to-maintain market data infrastructures, with cloud part of the data delivery solution.
For many financial firms, today’s cloud delivery and hosting capabilities offer a viable solution for supporting trading and investment teams and their support staff, accelerating demand for cloud-based market data delivery infrastructures. The thinking is that cloud may help firms with their broader aim of reducing their on-premises technology and equipment footprint, a trend that was emerging even before the Coronavirus struck.
Perhaps one of the toughest challenges that firms face around real-time market data on the cloud is that of entitlements and usage authorisation. Firms sourcing data from the two main data vendors, Refinitiv and Bloomberg, will generally be tied into their respective DACS and EMRS entitlements systems, often augmented by data inventory and contract management platforms like MDSL’s MDM or TRG Screen’s FITS and InfoMatch.
Entitlements can be a thorny subject when it comes to cloud-based distribution of market data. Firms are wary of falling foul of their licence agreements with their various data vendors, all of whom have different commercial considerations and penalties for non-compliance. This is why accurate tracking and reporting of market data access and usage is crucial.
The cloud can be a double-edged sword in this regard. One the one hand, transitioning from a dedicated infrastructure to the cloud might trigger extra licensing costs for what is effectively an additional data centre, so they may need to go through a period of paying twice for the same data. Indeed, firms may already be facing this situation as they entitle staff to operate from home while holding enterprise licences covering only their headquarters and regional offices.
On the other hand, cloud-based services such as those offered by Xignite and others can make it easier for firms to manage entitlements across multiple data vendors from a central source via a UI. “Our entitlements microservice is integrated with our real time microservice, to make sure that any distribution and any consumption of data is authenticated and entitled properly, so that only the right users have access to the data,” says Stephane Dubois, CEO of Xignite, whose microservices suite is supporting NICE Actimize’s cloud-based market data delivery infrastructure.
To read the full article, click here.