LSEG to step up AI and Fabric development, preps Eikon sunset

London Stock Exchange Group is on track with its plan to sunset its Eikon terminal in 2025. WatersTechnology first reported that Refinitiv, shortly after its purchase by LSEG, was moving away from Eikon and its Thomson One range of workstations with its debut of a next-generation data platform, dubbed Workspace. 

In a wide-ranging second-quarter earnings call held on August 3, LSEG chief executive David Schwimmer confirmed that Eikon would be shut down in two years following the migration of the majority of its users to the Workspace platform. The remaining Eikon users are “well on course” to migrate to Workspace by the end of 2024. In the meantime, the exchange provider is working to bring additional analytics to Workspace using Microsoft products. 

Schwimmer also provided an update on LSEG’s ongoing 10-year strategic partnership with Microsoft. The exchange operator will work alongside the tech giant to develop Microsoft’s new end-to-end data and analytics solution for enterprises, dubbed Fabric. LSEG will act as “customer zero” for Fabric, which could aid Microsoft in its bid to serve financial firms beyond their cloud needs. 

Kim Manis, partner director of product management at Microsoft, wrote in a recent blog post that Fabric “brings together the best of Microsoft Power BI, Azure Synapse and Azure Data Factory into one unified Software-as-a-Service platform.” LSEG’s Schwimmer said working to develop Fabric alongside Microsoft “will make access to and usage of our data seamless in a very powerful and versatile Microsoft environment.”

The main theme of this year’s earnings call season, AI, looms large on LSEG’s agenda. Schwimmer said the group’s engineers and developers are building new AI functionality into its existing platforms and workflows to enhance product activity. The field of tech will be the “single biggest area of value creation over the next few years,” he added.

Other new developments include the completion of the Acadia acquisition. The deal to integrate the margin processing tech provider was announced in December and signaled LSEG’s desire to expand into non-cleared markets. The acquisition will bolster the exchange group’s post-trade services division, allowing it to process both cleared and non-cleared derivatives. Customers will now be able to optimize capital and manage risk in cleared and uncleared positions, Schwimmer said.

Schwimmer also announced the launch of an FX matching platform in the second half of the year. In the report released by LSEG to accompany the earnings call, it states that “the migration of FX Matching to our own proven technology, together with other enhancements, will improve latency (speed) by a factor of 10.”