Alpha Alliance™ Enables Trading Services Firms to Collaborate and Deliver Industry-Leading Solutions for the Global Financial Markets

Herndon, VA (PRWeb).  July 27, 2011 — CFN Services, Inc., the leading provider of managed high-frequency trading enablement services, today announced the Alpha Alliance™, an innovative network of trading services firms delivering fully integrated and customizable solutions for the global electronic trading market.  The Alpha Alliance brings together best-of-breed trading technologies, applications, and services across the full trading life cycle, from analysis and decision-making, to risk management, execution, and settlement of the trade.

Alliance partners deploy their solutions on CFN ’s Alpha Platform™, a low latency trading infrastructure offering the highest performance for market data delivery and trade execution worldwide.  Technology partners rapidly deploy their applications and services on a proximity hosted platform as part of a comprehensive solution, improving application delivery performance while lowering costs and expanding access to new markets.

Alpha Alliance partners collaborate to develop full service enhanced, customized solutions that best advance the unique trading strategies of their clients. With access to the technical capabilities and market-specific expertise within the Alpha Alliance network, clients and business partners interact in completely new ways.  Trading firms ultimately benefit from having access to the market-leading solutions necessary to remain competitive in today’s rapidly evolving financial markets.

“CFN is very excited to play a pivotal role in taking automated trading solutions to the next level,” said Mark Casey, President of CFN Services. “Bringing the best technology, product and service firms together on one platform enables next-generation trading solutions capable of fully leveraging the rapid growth in global electronic trading. Alpha Alliance members are setting the standard for high performance trading.”

To find out now how Alpha Alliance can bring your trading solutions to the next level

About CFN Services in the Global Financial Markets
CFN Services is a leading provider of managed high-frequency trading enablement services, providing solutions that accelerate market data delivery and trade execution for some of the most sophisticated financial markets participants worldwide. CFN Services operates the low-latency  Alpha Platform™, a high performance low latency global infrastructure that accelerates trading performance for automated traders across key liquidity venues in the equities, options, futures, derivatives, and FX markets. CFN is the sponsor of the Alpha Alliance which is setting the standard for next generation infrastructure and providing leading edge trading solutions. For more information visit CFN Services website

About CFN Services

CFN Services provides high performance network and application delivery solutions for real-time, mission critical applications. Leveraging FiberSource^®, a global network optimization platform, CFN Services builds low-latency private cloud solutions to solve the performance challenges of latency and jitter in distributed IT environments. Whether the application and data are dispersed across town or around the globe, CFN Services deploys turnkey solutions within and between public and private data centers in North and South America, Europe, and Asia. For more information: http://www.cfnservices.com

Press Contacts:

Judy Misbin-May, CFN Services

+1-703-788-6633

judy.misbin-may@cfnservices.com

High Performance Private Cloud Platform Accelerates Market Data Delivery and Trade Execution Across Major Asset Classes and Liquidity Venues Worldwide

Herndon, VA (PRWeb). — June 14, 2011 — CFN Services, a leading provider of managed high-frequency trading enablement services, today announced the Alpha Platform™, a global high performance private cloud for automated trading. This low-latency market data and application delivery platform improves automated trading performance across key liquidity venues in the equities, options, futures, derivatives, and FX markets. It is a flexible and customizable platform that seamlessly integrates delivery of low latency market and event data with best-of-breed trading applications, all proximity hosted within the liquidity venues to accelerate trading performance.

The infrastructure that forms the foundation of the Alpha Platform™ provides ultra-low-latency market data delivery and trade execution for some of the world’s most sophisticated high-frequency trading firms. Trading application vendors can now leverage this same infrastructure to jumpstart low-latency global delivery of their solutions, while trading firms can rapidly deploy these applications in a high performance environment to capture more Alpha and increased trading profits. Read More

Companies’ first deployment is designed to enable Canadian website tracking aggregated market-data messages across North American exchanges

Herndon, VA (PRWeb). — June 16, 2011 — CFN Services, the leading provider of managed high-frequency trading enablement services, today announced that Exegy, the market leader in high-performance ticker plants, has selected the Alpha Platform™ to deploy the ultra-low-latency, hardware-accelerated Exegy Ticker Plant.

With unmatched throughput and ultra-low latency, the Exegy Ticker Plant processes and enriches data for the world’s leading collocated trading operations. A single Exegy Ticker Plant provides all the updates for www.MarketDataPeaks.com, the first public website that provides a minute-by-minute account of the aggregated volume of market-data messages across major North American exchanges.

“The Alpha Platform™ provides an ideal infrastructure for the Exegy Ticker Plant offering,” said Jeff Wells, Vice President of Product Marketing, Exegy. “Our first deployment with CFN Services will be at the Toronto data center where we plan to create a MarketDataPeaks website for Canada.”

The infrastructure that forms the foundation of the Alpha Platform™ provides ultra-low-latency market data delivery and trade execution for some of the world’s most sophisticated high-frequency trading firms. Trading application vendors can now leverage this same infrastructure to jumpstart low-latency global delivery of their solutions, while trading firms can rapidly deploy these applications in a high performance environment to capture more Alpha and increased trading profits.

“CFN Services has launched a premier platform for seamless integration of low-latency market and event data with high-performance trading applications,” said Sebastian Yoon, CFN Services’ Vice President of Financial Services. “We’re excited about bringing Exegy’s ticker plant technology to the Alpha Platform™, further expanding the market leading solutions it integrates across key liquidity venues worldwide.”

About Exegy Exegy provides ultra-high performance hardware-accelerated market data appliances (www.exegy.com/tickerplant) that efficiently process and enrich market data for the world’s leading financial organizations. Exegy’s unique market data products respond to financial organizations’ growing demands for low latency, reduced cost of ownership, and flexibility. Exegy’s products are compatible with leading operating systems and interconnects. For more information, please visit www.exegy.com.

About CFN Services in the Global Financial Markets CFN Services is a leading provider of managed high-frequency trading enablement services, providing solutions that accelerate market data delivery and trade execution for some of the most sophisticated financial markets participants worldwide. CFN Services operates the low-latency Alpha Platform™, a high performance global cloud that accelerates trading performance for automated traders across key liquidity venues in the equities, options, futures, derivatives, and FX markets.

About CFN Services CFN Services provides high performance network and application delivery solutions for real-time, mission critical applications. Leveraging FiberSource^®, a global network optimization platform, CFN Services builds low-latency private cloud solutions to solve the performance challenges of latency and jitter in distributed IT environments. Whether the application and data are dispersed across town or around the globe, CFN Services deploys turnkey solutions within and between public and private data centers in North and South America, Europe, and Asia.

Press Contacts:

CFN Services

Judy Misbin-May

+1-703-788-6633

judy.misbin-may@cfnservices.com

Exegy

Jeff Wells

+1-314-218-3626

jwells@exegy.com

For more information on this offer or to order now click here

Ridgeland, MS – March 29, 2011 – Spread Networks, LLC, a privately owned telecommunications provider, today announced a new agreement with CFN Services, a managed telecom infrastructure services company, which gives

CFN rights to resell Spread Networks’ Low Latency Wave Service, effective immediately.

Spread Networks recently announced that it had improved the latency of its Low Latency Wave Service to 14.6ms.  CFN can now offer its customers 1G and sub-1G bandwidth services on Spread Networks’ Low Latency Wave network.  CFN will be the exclusive provider of sub-1G bandwidth on the Spread network.

“Our agreement with CFN Services provides an opportunity to reach a broader customer base than ever before,” said David Barksdale, Chief Executive Officer of Spread Networks, “By offering an increased range of bandwidth options, CFN Services will address customers who need less bandwidth but still demand Spread Networks’ commitment to industry leading latency and excellent service.”

“CFN Services operates a premier delivery platform for market data and trading applications in top liquidity venues around the world. Our customer applications demand the highest performance networks with respect to latency and availability,” states Mark Casey, President and CEO of CFN Services. “Adding Spread Networks leading Low Latency Wave Service between New York and Chicago future proofs our platform, ensuring that we will continue to offer best in class latency between those direct markets and their extensions into critical international venues.”

CFN’s bandwidth services on the Spread network will be offered between Chicago, IL and Spread Networks New Jersey endpoints at Newark, Weehawken, Carteret and Secaucus.  With the shortest route between Chicago and New Jersey, the services will continue to provide the lowest latency of any available network service between these financial centers, with the exception of Spread Networks’ own dark fiber service.

In addition to electronic trading firms, this service is ideal for brokers, market data vendors, exchanges, ECN and alternative trading systems (ATS) that value low latency. The network is monitored by a dedicated customer service team and backed by a competitive service level agreement.

Spread Networks’ fiber network was built from the ground up with the financial community in mind. In addition to its wave service, Spread Networks offers its flagship private dark fiber service that is the benchmark for ultra low latency connecting New York and Chicago in under 13.33 milliseconds roundtrip. To build this network, Spread Networks literally trenched a long-haul route on the shortest possible path connecting these two financial centers.

About Spread Networks

Spread Networks, a privately own telecommunications provider, built a new fiber network from the ground up, connecting New York and Chicago to set a new standard for latency. Without the drag of traditional telecommunications offerings, Spread Networks provides its customers with a state-of-the-art diverse and secure fiber optic network to allow data to run as close as possible to the true speed of light through fiber.

www.spreadnetworks.com

About CFN Services

CFN Services is a provider of custom, high performance network and application solutions to sophisticated global financial markets participants and network operators worldwide, as well as delivering the on the promise of 3G and 4G networks for mobile operators. Leveraging its proprietary global transport planning platform FiberSource, CFN enables carrier, enterprise, and government network operators to optimize across the key network variables of latency, diversity, bandwidth, and cost. For more information, visit www.cfnservices.com.

Contact:

media@spreadnetworks.com  — judy.misbin.may@cfnservices.com

Use Case: Fully Managed Trading Infrastructure

Author: Judy Misbin-May

As lead traders in large corporate investment firms and banks begin look for more control over their future, many are taking the leap to start their own Proprietary Trading Firms.  One such newly formed High Frequency Trading firm, came to CFN Services with a challenge. Their goal was to be up and trading real-time within a 30 day window. They had been working with many vendors to integrate a comprehensive solution that would optimize the trading ecosystem from pre-to-post trade execution.  As they dealt with contracts, vendors and many headaches, they requested of CFN to make this process easier so they could focus on their goals and profitability for their multi-asset trading strategy

Solution:

CFN FAST Platform (Financial Application Services Trading Platform) provided the value to this firm that they required, yet the flexibility and control they insisted on. Through the module approach offered by CFN Services, the trading firm was able to pick and choose the areas they wanted to keep in house and areas they wanted to outsource. They did not need to question their buying decisions as CFN is host/carrier neutral picking the best solution for each specific client. CFN also gave them peace of mind by providing the firm a few solutions with the pros and cons of each clearly articulated. The trading firm also did not want to lock up cash in their trading platform, and with CFN Services was able to implement their full solution with little capital outlay.

Outcome:

Utilizing CFN expertise and suite of products, this firm was able to greatly reduce the volume of partners and vendors they needed to negotiate and sign contracts with.  This alone provided them the ability to free up to 25 hours a week of the pre-start up time to focus on the core area of the business.  The goal to be up and trading within 30 days was accomplished, without divulging proprietary information. The trading firm acknowledged that CFN helped accelerate the development cycle and allowed them to strengthen their place in the market.

To inquire about options for your firm click here

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/currency-trading-articles/use-case-fully-managed-trading-infrastructure-4326531.html

About the Author

Herndon, VA – March 6, 2011 – CFN Services, a leading provider of managed high frequency trading infrastructure services, today announced that it has added optimized delivery of North American exchange feeds on its global low latency trading infrastructure platform which dramatically reduce latency between, and within, US and Canadian trading venues. This eliminates the need for clients to invest in low latency circuits and instead utilize CFN Managed Trading Infrastructure Platform to deliver their market data cost effectively and with leading low latency. The CFN Managed Trading Infrastructure Platform seamlessly integrates the CFN Financial Ecosystem, which provides clients with a wide range of complimentary market data, news, service and application providers. The CFN Financial Ecosystem is consistent with CFN’s policy of being vendor neutral to provide the best of class solutions.

CFN Low Latency Market Data Delivery is designed to provide best of breed solutions for each client and insure reliability, performance, and a lower overall operating cost by employing:

• Optimized Infrastructure – CFN maintains an evergreen structured technology refresh program which can quickly and seamlessly react to market demands and changes
• Resiliency – CFN practice is to maintain redundant connectivity to all data sources

• Flexible configurations – as business needs and trading strategies evolve services can be quickly modified to meet current requirements

• Lower cost of ownership – Fully managed solutions to include the market data, connec-tivity and managed hosting

• Scalability – CFN can support requirements ranging from a single server in a single location to an interconnected global deployment
• Support – from a 24×7 operations center to on-demand access to a pool of interdisciplinary talent throughout a client’s entire systems life cycle, from needs determination, evaluation, implementation, deployment, enhancements, and maintenance

Sebastian Yoon, CFN Vice President of Financial Services, states, “CFN Managed Trading Infrastructure is designed to optimize the trading process while controlling expenses for our clients. For example we are able to reduce delivery latency of CME, NYSE, BATs, and ARCA market data between Chicago and New York to 14.6 milliseconds, while streamlining expenses for clients by eliminating the need to run redundant individual data circuits.”

About CFN Services
CFN Services is a managed telecom infrastructure services company providing network services for the Enterprise, Public Sector, Carrier and Wireless Markets, specializing in ultra-low latency networking, middle mile and last mile optimization and mobile back haul. CFN Services leverages FiberSource®, a global knowledge-based platform that identifies all available dark and lit fiber, collocation, towers, structures and lit buildings; providing network design, planning, deployment, and managed services offerings. For more information http://www.cfnservices.com

Recently, there has been a lot of information distributed in the industry regarding latency in optical transport systems. This white paper takes an objective look at what really causes latency in transport systems and what to look for in a transport system designed for low latency. Download Now

Available Now: 2010 Trading Beyond the Horizon

Download Now

In 2010, financial markets participants will continue to expand their trading activities as liquidity increasingly becomes fragmented, seeking alpha in new markets, best execution in dark pools, arbitrage opportunities across the order book and by implementing high frequency and complex, multi-leg, cross asset class strategies.

The successful operations – whether they be the proprietary desks of traditional broker/dealers, specialist high frequency and algorithmic traders, or quantitative hedge funds –  will leverage a trading infrastructure that combines high performance analytical, algorithmic and order routing platforms with the lowest latency access to multiple, geographically dispersed execution venues.

Multi-market trading – leveraging a fragmented market landscape – introduces new challenges, even for trading firms that have mastered the complexities of low-latency execution using approaches such as co-location and proximity.  Those mechanisms, while still relevant, provide a less complete solution when trading across markets that are geographically dispersed.

New entrants into the market for connectivity and proximity services include organizations that are themselves market participants, such as sell-side firms offering sponsored access and DMA, and liquidity venues, which are now providing global order routing networks, in some cases channelling order flow to their competitors.

Those service providers join traditional players including telcos, hosting companies and value-added extranet vendors, who often bundle trading applications with connectivity.

The bottom line: For multi-market trading, optimization of long-haul and metro communications links, combined with smart use of co-location, is an imperative for achieving the lowest latency, and this requires an understanding of connectivity offerings at a deep, granular level.

This  industry briefing explains the drivers for fragmentation and multi-market trading, the evolving landscape of market access, and explores connectivity approaches to minimize latency.

TAMPA, Fla. – December 2, 2009 – Switch and Data (NASDAQ: SDXC), a leading provider of network-neutral data center and Internet exchange services, announced today that CFN Services, a leading ultra low-latency network and custom fiber optic network integrator in the financial industry, has joined Switch and Data’s GeoReach partnership program.  CFN will provide clients with turnkey or custom-designed, low latency interconnections to multiple regional exchanges from Switch and Data’s New York and Toronto Financial EcoCentersSM.  CFN FiberSource(r) Advisor provides professional services to assist financial firms in their regional or global network design, planning, and strategy to enhance their individual electronic trading strategies.

CFN Services, the low-latency leader, provides low-latency global exchange connectivity; offering specific ultra low-latency solutions for the trading areas in Toronto, Chicago, New York/ New Jersey Metro, Washington DC, Sao Paulo, London/London Metro, Frankfurt and Tokyo.   CFN is recognized as one of the only network providers to offer the Low Latency Guarantee along with a Latency Improvement Plan. The key to the integrated solution provided by CFN Services is the ability to identify metro fiber, long haul, and the collocation space to piece together the carrier networks onto one optimal path.   CFN sets itself apart from other transport vendors by offering carrier neutrality, professional services, fully managed services and the ability to design and implement custom fiber networks.

“We are proud to be part of Switch and Data’s new GeoReach program,” said David Conrad, Vice President of Finanical Market Sales, CFN Services. “CFN and Switch and Data can now deliver a complete low-latency solution in the most ideal market locations in New York and Toronto. Under this partnership, we can implement a competitive and comprehensive solution to the most demanding high frequency trading or latency-sensitive infrastructure.”

Switch and Data’s GeoReach partnership program is a select group of providers who have engineered their networks to meet the needs of the high frequency trading community. GeoReach partners have engineered optimum paths from Switch and Data’s EcoCenters to each of the regional liquidity providers that satisfy the requirements of the most latency-sensitive infrastructure. Firms can focus on their core and add each new ATS or Exchange using a low cost, minimal footprint while still maintaining ultra low latency communication across the markets.

“Adding CFN Services to our GeoReach partner program in our New York and Toronto Financial EcoCenters enhances our ability to offer customers ultra-low-latency connectivity to their desired exchanges,” said John Panzica, Vice President of Switch and Data’s Financial Services Practice.  “As more customers utilize trading strategies across the entire market landscape, a selection of optimized paths to the region’s liquidity providers becomes ever more crucial. CFN’s continual optimization creates a compelling story for firms seeking to stay ahead of the curve.”

GeoReach Partners are a critical element of Switch and Data’s Financial EcoCenters which provide mission-critical infrastructure to meet the security, volume and low-latency requirements of the electronic trading community.  These EcoCenters aggregate an ecosystem of the pre and post- trade service provider, buy-side and sell-side communities into Switch and Data sites located in the geographic center of the major liquidity providers in New York and Toronto.

About CFN Services

CFN Services, the Low Latency Leader, is a managed telecom infrastructure services company providing network services for the Enterprise, Public Sector and Carrier Markets, specializing in network design, planning, deployment, and managed services, including: Low Latency Global Exchange Connectivity, Global, Regional and metro network design and cost optimization and mobile backhaul optimization

CFN Services specializes in Data Center optimization ensuring the long haul network enhances the Enterprise distributed network strategy. CFN Services leverages FiberSource®, a global knowledge-based platform that can view all available dark and lit fiber, collocation, and lit buildings; providing the ability to quickly identify and design ultra low latency solutions. Learn how CFN Services can ensure you are Optimizing the Power of your Network www.cfnservices.com

About Switch and Data

Switch and Data is a premier provider of network-neutral data centers that house, power and interconnect the Internet. Leading content companies, enterprises and communications service providers rely on Switch and Data to connect to customers and exchange Internet traffic. Switch and Data has built a reputation for world-class service, delivered across the broadest colocation footprint and richest network of interconnections in North America. Switch and Data operates 34 sites in the U.S. and Canada, provides one of the highest customer satisfaction scores for technical and engineering support in the industry, and is home to PAIX® — the world’s first commercial Internet exchange.

Important information about Switch and Data is routinely posted to the investor relations section of the company’s website www.switchanddata.com. For copies of all Switch and Data press releases and SEC filings, please visit the website. To automatically receive Switch and Data financial news by email, please visit the website and subscribe to Email Alerts. Investors are encouraged to check Switch and Data’s website frequently to access the most up-to-date information.

From Traders Magazine Online News:

Interest in high-frequency trading is at an all-time high, but profit-taking from high-frequency trading strategies focused on low latency is getting tougher.
“The window of opportunity to get into high-frequency trading is almost closed,” said Mark Casey, president of CFN Services, a network provider. He defined high-frequency trading as strategies whose underpinning is low-latency order placement and execution.
“If you’re competing primarily on latency, it’s very, very, very, very difficult,” added Nigel Faulkner, chief technology officer for the equities technology group at Goldman Sachs.
The cost of the technology and infrastucture needed to support high-frequency trading is “tens of millions of dollars” per year, according to Kevin McPartland, a senior analyst at financial services research firm TABB Group. He moderated a panel sponsored by TABB Group and Switch and Data, a data center operator, last Thursday. This article is based on the panel discussion.
Low latency is necessary, McPartland said, to process market data faster than competitors. And high-frequency trading, which encompasses a range of strategies, depends on that data. “It’s like you’re seeing the Wall Street Journal five microseconds into the future,” he said.
High-frequency trading firms must be concerned about latency, but that level of concern should depend on “how much profit they intend to make from every millisecond or microsecond,” Goldman’s Faulkner said. He noted that firms must understand the “value of a micro or milli” for the particular strategy they’re running.
“The infrastucture isn’t the barrier” for firms interested in high-frequency trading, CFN’s Casey told the audience. The barrier is competition. In his view, competing with the most latency-focused firms is a tough, elite game because, at that level, microseconds count. A microsecond is one-millionth of a second, while a millisecond is one-thousandth of a second.
According to a recent TABB report on financial services data centers, the financial services industry spends $1.8 billion for co-location and private facilities to support fast direct access to market centers. Broker-dealers account for half of that sum, or $900 million. Exchanges represent 23 percent, proprietary trading firms 13 percent, asset managers 10 percent and hedge funds 4 percent. That report was published in March, but the figures remain accurate, McPartland said, based on TABB’s ongoing research on data centers and trading, including for an upcoming report on sellside technology focused on U.S. equity infrastructure.
McPartland noted that bulge-bracket firms will often have four or five primary data centers to support their own equities trading and the trading of their clients, and 10 or more co-lo sites in the U.S. All brokers, he said, use co-lo at some level, with many operating in at least two or three co-lo sites.
McPartland added that housing servers within an exchange’s data site is costlier than placing the servers near the facility, such as across the street. The chief features behind a firm’s choice of a data center are cost (which is important to 57 percent of firms), exchange proximity (48 percent), space in the data center to expand (33 percent) and power reliability (29 percent), according to TABB. Additional concerns are service, security, control and network neutrality.
CFN’s Casey said that “proximity trading” has exploded over the last couple of years. Proximity trading refers to strategies that depend on low latency by installing computer servers near a market center’s matching engine.
One of the changes in the marketplace in recent years that has fueled high-frequency trading was regulation. In 2007, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Regulation NMS went into effect. Reg NMS lay down a set of rules to modernize the markets, but it also made the landscape more fertile for high-frequency trading firms. Casey noted that execution strategies that used to be implemented just on Nasdaq, for instance, have given way to more inter-market trading strategies.
But regulation wasn’t the only significant change. The TABB study found that the “game-changing technology” that spurred the growth of high-frequency trading was bandwidth availability and the relative low cost of buying bandwidth. “That’s what is letting equities volume be eight-to-nine billion shares per day,” McPartland said.
Several panelists pointed out that while speed is vital, not all high-frequency trading depends on extreme low-latency. Nor is all low-latency trading high-frequency, CFN’s Casey said. Still, Goldman’s Faulkner observed that “if it’s high-enough frequency, it must be low latency.” He added that “we increasingly see that the benchmark [for high-frequency trading firms] is low latency.”
As more firms now get into high-frequency trading, their infrastructure development has taken different paths. George Hessler, executive vice president at Lime Brokerage, said he thinks the balance for many firms is tipping toward renting components of the technology and infrastructure, rather than building them from scratch. He added that as consolidation takes place in this part of the trading-services industry, the hardware and software services are improving dramatically. Lime services many high-frequency trading clients.
Goldman’s Faulkner, however, said that it would be hard for a truly latency-sensitive firm to be satisfied with vendor products. For big banks, he added, servicing these firms has also become more complex because their needs are different from the traditional needs of high-volume clients. “We’re having to change the mix of our application developers,” he said.
Firms that are really latency-sensitive must pull out all the stops to account for every microsecond, since that affects their profitability. They must “account for the last 100 microseconds they can’t find,” and be able to figure out if the latency is in the code, switches, applications or elsewhere, Faulkner said.
UBS has a “strong bias” to build rather than rent the various components necessary to support high-frequency-trading firms, according to Josh Schubkegel, executive director for client-facing technology at the big bank. He noted that some clients want to get “close to the metal” and do everything themselves, while others do not.
Schubkegel noted that the focus on serving high-frequency firms has also benefited other clients at some of the big banks. UBS, he said, has leveraged some of the technology platforms developed for high-frequency traders for its direct market access and algorithmic trading business.