BSO and Hoptroff Partner on Time-Stamping Service

Network and hosting provider BSO has announced a partnership with synchronization specialist Hoptroff to offer a platform for timestamping trades to within ten microseconds, an integrated platform it calls “time-as-a-service.”

According to Simon Kenny, CEO at Hoptroff, what makes the service different is having accuracy and traceability delivered on a global footprint. “While other companies might offer accurate time, and there are several who are doing this, what they don’t do is actually also make the synchronization software that goes onto the servers,” he says, “They don’t have the system for actually monitoring and recording timing logs.”

He notes the service distributes three signals to all their customers, not just a one-time feed. This allows a constant comparison between the different feeds to make sure they are correct. By contrast, a problem could occur if there was only one feed from a single satellite, in that if the satellite were to experience any issues in its timing, there would not necessarily be an alert the time was invalid at that time.   

The service will offer a time stamp of trades to within ten microseconds of the primary reference standard of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC.) The revised Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (Mifid II) requires firms and venues to accurately time stamp events and to be able to prove their synchronization to UTC. 

Gaspard Coudurier, product manager at BSO, says that in the absence of a service like the one it is offering, an entire infrastructure may have to be built in order to be able to sync with UTC and be able to report this to the regulator. In many datacenters, a global positioning system antenna can be put on the roof, but this would also involve a grandmaster clock to synchronize with the satellite, which would then need to be adjusted continually to ensure there is no lag. 

The Hoptroff brand is famous for its invention of the world’s first atomic wristwatch, and its recent TaaS offering has been available for close to a year. The vendor uses artificial intelligence in its synchronization system to learn the local environment, which allows it to optimize the steering of the local clock to create accurate timing levels consistently.

Hoptroff’s Kenny acknowledges those already having built their local timing infrastructure will stay with what they have. But he feels the service could still be useful when it is time to grow businesses.  

“Instead of you having to install new clocks into a new datacenter, what you do is you actually put in a connection to the timing feed and synchronized them,” he says. “That has a massive cap-ex saving for the financial services industry. So while yes, there is an existing established business of hardware that has been installed, we think over time that will erode because it is much more cost effective, rather than going out and buying more clocks, it will be much more cost effective to take in a service, and that will save you on cap ex.”