Pico Continues Infrastructure Upgrade

New York-based trading and low-latency infrastructure technology provider Pico Quantitative Trading is constantly reviewing its network latencies and migrating to faster paths when they become available. “In addition, we review hardware with clients and upgrade either when better hardware is available or when the client’s investment cycles are up,” says Pico founder and CEO Jarrod Yuster.

It also renews its own hardware on regular intervals and when lower latency hardware such as layer one (L1) switching enters the market. 
    
L1 is known as the physical layer and transmits data across physical mediums. In a conventional network switch, data messages received at L1 is passed up the chain to layer 2 or layer 3, where the decision is made on the content of the message. Then, the results are passed back to L1. This takes time, so availability of L1 switching would mean that the decision can actually be made at L1, and hence shorten latency. 

Yuster says the company is currently analyzing the viability in a service provider network and migrate to new technology when it is appropriate. 

“The fact that we operate a large test lab for hard and software in LD6 (London) has enabled us to not only do these tests in a proper environment but also helped to maintain a stable environment for our clients,” he adds. 

This year Pico added new dark fiber capabilities in the New York metro area. It is working on rolling out L1 venue connectivity to more datacenters globally, as well as reviewing its global network mesh to ensure its latencies are up to mark. 

In March, Pico previously said it will be adding 20 new datacenters that will provide a two-way offering for US and European clients trading across all major Asian markets, and vice versa. 

Since then, Yuster says Pico has completed colocations at Singapore Exchange’s datacenter, Equinix’s SG1 facility in Singapore, HK5 in Hong Kong, TY3 in Tokyo and Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEx) connecting the Asia-Pacific region to Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), as well as the Americas. 

It also recently launched a new colocation facility and is directly connected to HKEx’s hosting services datacenter. Any collocated client in HKEx will be able to use Pico’s solutions, such as PicoNet global connectivity—the company’s proprietary network that gives the electronic-trading community access to liquidity sources, information providers and counterparties—as well as procurement-as-a-service or monitoring-and-management-as-a-service. 

On top of that, its global customers can now easily access HKEx colocation facilities through PicoNet, or if they are deciding to collocate at HKEx’s datacenter, they can do so with either dedicated or shared rack space, says Yuster. 

“We are trying to offer pretty much any colocation globally that has a financial market in it to our clients, and to be able to access that in either a colocation footprint or via PicoNet,” he says.

It is working on building out new locations in Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand, China and at the AT Tokyo Chuo CC1 facility. This will be followed by Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and India, he says.