Equinix To Host Intel Testing Facility At London Data Center
June 26, 2009
In a joint collaboration with Intel, Equinix said earlier this week that it will provide collocation space at its London (LD4) International Business Exchange data center for Intel’s fasterLAB testing facility. As part of the collaboration, Intel will also provide Equinix’s customers with access to the latest processors, working with a range of technology partners to test systems, using enhanced, updated configurations against a range of real-life operational trade execution scenarios.
From September 2009, fasterLAB—a low latency technology testing facility based at Intel’s services headquarters near London—will be extended into the LD4 data center, allowing all participants of the Equinix Financial Exchange marketplace to fine tune their operational infrastructure to ensure best possible execution times when they engage colocation operations. This collaboration means that, for the first time, the expertise brought by fasterLAB will be available outside Intel’s own test facilities and in a live production environment, according to Equinix.
The Equinix Financial Exchange consists of execution venues, buy- and sell-side firms, market data providers, technology providers and financial networks that locate infrastructure within Equinix data centers in order to benefit from low latency connectivity. Intel will be available to work with this community, focusing on the infrastructure level architecture of their trading systems, to deliver further throughput and latency improvements.
"Intel’s proven track record of optimizing trading architectures to dramatically reduce latency, will be of significant value to the community of financial firms colocated within our LD4 center, whose number one requirement is cut execution times,” said Petrina Steele, vice president, business development at Equinix in Europe.
Nigel Woodward, worldwide director of financial services at Intel, said Intel’s teaming with Equinix is “a natural progression … to facilitate faster trading operations and we hope that the collaboration will represent a very positive development for all market participants.”
Supporting companies assisting in the fasterLAB initiative include Activ Financial, Citihub, Chi-X, Chi-Tech, Correlix, Corvil, Fixnetix, ICAP, Progress Software's Apama Algorithm Trading Platform, Quanthouse, Rapid Addition, SeaNet Technologies, TBricks, Thomson Reuters, TS-Associates plc and Verari Systems, as well as other leading engineering consulting companies, trading services firms, niche software providers and hardware and infrastructure specialists.
