With Exchange Nods And Network, Exegy Becomes Data Vendor

Exegy has launched a new service, X-Port, which enables clients to access direct feeds from US exchanges at major co-location datacenters, including Equinix’s NY4 datacenter in Secaucus, NJ, and Nasdaq and NYSE’s datacenters in Carteret and Mahwah, NJ, respectively. The service will initially provide equities and options data from Nasdaq, NYSE, Bats Global Markets, OTC Markets Group, and consolidated tape feeds from SIAC (the Securities Industry Automation Corp), as well as consolidated options data from the Options Price Reporting Authority. Exegy will add direct feeds from options markets, as well as futures markets in response to client demand, and potentially Canadian market data also.

The vendor will migrate its Data Tone lightweight normalized data service to using X-Port as its data source, rather than using third-party data suppliers.

“We will work with existing clients of Data Tone to transition to Exegy as their source of data and for reporting to exchanges. They will just have to make a logical networking change on their side,” says Exegy chief technology officer David Taylor. “With this move, we will be a one-stop shop for clients who use that service. It will mean a cleaner customer experience for Data Tone clients… who will have the option of using us to source any data they need,” he says. “It means we can put a more compelling proposition in front of clients.”

To support the flow of data between exchanges and datacenters, Exegy has worked with an unnamed partner to build a network of direct fiber links. “The partner building the network with us is already in the vendor space. We’ve been a part of building and optimizing this data network,” Taylor says. “And from a service level, we will monitor the network that delivers the data with the same technology that we deploy to monitor our appliances.

Previously, clients would have needed to arrange their own connectivity between their Exegy appliances and exchanges. By having Exegy perform these functions on their behalf, clients will both save money and—depending on each firm’s setup and sophistication—potentially reduce latency by “tens to hundreds of microseconds,” Taylor says. “Getting exchange approvals, setting up the network and understanding the billing and reporting process, and so on, is not a trivial exercise, so … for someone who has done this themselves until now, we expect this to be much cheaper.”

Aside from Data Tone clients, Taylor says the vendor expects X-Port to appeal to firms using its appliance in larger hosted environments, ranging from small quantitative asset managers to buy-side firms with between $10 billion and $20 billion under management, and large sell-side firms.

“We’ve always looked at this part of the front-office technology stack and said it would be ‘not if, but when’ we would do it. And given the scale and growth of our business, the time is now right,” Taylor says. “Also, we’ve seen a change in the market, where growing numbers of clients are asking us to take on more of their solutions than just technology and managed services. They want us to be a source of normalized data, which we had previously addressed by working with other data providers.”

Endorsing Exegy’s move to become a vendor of exchange data, Bats vice president of market data and access services Kevin Carrai says the exchange supports vendors that offer its clients “fast and flexible access to our data at a low cost,” while Matthew Fuchs, executive vice president of market data and strategy at OTC Markets Group says Exegy clients will be able to access real-time Level 1 and Level 2 data on 10,000 securities listed on its OTCQX, OTCQB and Pink markets.