OptionsXpress will be adopting Activ Market Data Processing Unit (MPU) from Activ Financial, a global provider of fully managed low-latency market data solutions, to accelerate low-latency exchange feed processing and enhance throughput and performance.
Activ MPU combines market data content and technology in a single FPGA-driven service offering. The solution will provide OptionsXpress with a ticker plant to manage high data volumes, rein in out-of-control hardware costs and prevent service degradation. As a result, OptionsXpress can continuously meet high service level agreements (SLAs) and reduce trading system latencies during massive message rate growth.
Leveraging Activ MPU, OptionsXpress will be able to reduce its market data infrastructure currently spread across three US data centers while decreasing costs, switch count and potential points of failure.
Benjamin Stein, EVP of technology at OptionsXpress, said: OptionsXpress’ customers – everyday investors who demand professional tools and trading technology – directly benefit from our innovation focused partnership with Activ. It provides a combination of high-quality, low-latency market data content and technologies Activ MPU keeps us ahead of escalating market data message rates and delivers significant latency and performance benefits.
Mike Dunne, co-founder and CTO at Activ Financial, said: From the beginning, we architected our software to capitalize on the latest technologies, including hardware acceleration, so we can provide the most innovative trading solutions and lowest possible latency.