NYSE Technologies Puts Cloud Middleware Out in the Open
October 31, 2011
NYSE Technologies said it had donated a piece of code that sits in between applications and operating systems, so that trading, market data and other programs can be “openly” created, at low cost, for use on computing clouds.
The commercial technology unit of NYSE Euronext (NYX) said that it was turning over its Middleware Agnostic Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAMA) to the Linux Foundation, a nonprofit consortium that fosters the use of and distribution of source code that any developer can use. The source code can be downloaded via the Internet, without charge.
In this case, the NYSE Technologies code is being renamed OpenMAMA. It is intended to be a “vendor neutral platform” for the financial services industry, to programs and services that can be used on demand.
Exegy, a market data appliance company, said it would join the OpenMAMA Steering Group. Other members of that group will include J.P. Morgan, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, EMC and Fixnetix.
The move comes two weeks after NYSE Technologies launched what it called Capital Markets Community Platform Advisory Service designed to get market participants to move services into on-demand or “cloud” computing platforms and five months after the formal launch of its Capital Markets Community Platform, a cloud service that also involves virtualization software supplier VMware and storage giant EMC.
That cloud is designed to provide direct, on-demand access to high-performance, low-latency services from NYSE Technologies, including its Superfeed of market data, its Risk Management Gateway, its Managed Services Hub, and its global Liquidity Center Network.
Turning over its middleware is its attempt to allay concerns of market participants that developing market data or other applications for that platform would lock them in to NYSE Technologies' cloud.
“Even if you’re on our cloud platform, you’re not locked in to our cloud platform,’’ said Brian Doherty, managing director of enterprise software for NYSE Technologies.
"NYSE Technologies’ vision has always been to create a new breed of capital markets community that benefits from our extensive global network and utilizes the best, most innovative technologies from a range of service providers, not just ourselves,” said Stanley Young, CEO, NYSE Technologies. Young estimated that 150 market participants use MAMA, at this point.
Exegy, Doherty noted, is a competitor to NYSE Technologies in the supply of market data to market participants, for instance.
Exegy said that a customer that has an Exegy Ticker Plant could, for instance, more easily share market data across different internal departments. If a trading firm's prop group is already subscribing but it wants a compliance group to see top-of-book data the standardization on MAMA will make this easier. If the compliance group already has MAMA serving up data to its risk systems, they will be able to get the same order book data from the same source.
Doherty expects market data feeds to be the first area of development that could see wide use of the OpenMAMA interfact.
