Exberry’s Guy Melamed on paradigm shift with cloud-native exchanges at FIA Boca 2023

The Futures Industry Association (FIA) welcomed the global derivatives industry to the 48th annual Boca International Derivatives Conference, held on 14-16 March in Boca Raton, Florida.

Back in full force for the first time since Covid, FIA Boca 2023 attracted more than 40 exchanges and trading venues as well as regulators looking to take the pulse of the industry as trading volumes in global exchange-traded derivatives rose by 34%, printing a new record for the 4th consecutive year.

Exberry for scalability, savings, time-to-market, performance, and security

Among the attendees was Guy Melamed, Co-Founder and CEO of Exberry, the cloud-native provider of exchange and trading technology for secondary markets. The firm provides a SaaS platform that allows clients to launch any type of instrument, cloud-native, asset-agnostic, in an unmatched time-to-market, while under a “pay as you go” model. The Exchange-in-a-Box solution is built for stock exchanges, digital securities, and marketplaces.

Exberry was present at FIA Boca 2023 to show that moving exchanges and marketplaces to the cloud is the way to go.

Scalability (both up and down, to existing as well as new markets), cost-effectiveness (savings of 40-60% of the total cost of ownership), enhanced server security, and a faster time-to-market are some of the key advantages of moving to the cloud with Exberry, Guy Melamed stated.

“From a performance point of view, we support High-Frequency Trading (HFT); more stable and faster than on-premises solutions”, he continued, as he also noted that the firm has top-notch security people taking care of that department, following strict guidelines that make it safer than an on-premises security environment.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) also plays a critical role here. Exberry has been given full certification by AWS and has an ongoing partnership with the on-demand cloud solutions giant in order to address any issue with clients with maximum comfort for everyone. The partnership with AWS provides an extra layer of security, credibility, and customer support to the whole Exberry operation.

“Our tech, stability, and performance, were tested and vetted by AWS. It helps clients feel more comfortable and understand that we are a reliable partner to manage the tech and exchanges”, he said as he explained that they exchange feedback with AWS and redirect customer tickets to them.

“Slowly we’ll see the main markets move to the cloud”

During the interview, Guy Melamed reiterated that Exberry represents a paradigm shift as exchange operators no longer have to invest brutal sums of money to expand to a new location, taking real estate, servers, design and update the hardware, etc.

“Everything here is SaaS managed services”, Melamed said, noting that all is taken care of and have access to servers everywhere that matters. “If you launch in Singapore, your exchange will run from the Singapore location.”

The chief executive said Exberry is launching markets in Asia Pacific, Europe, the United States, South America, and the Middle East, as he insisted that moving to the cloud is the right strategy not only for data but also trading and eventually all the market. “I believe we’ll see new markets being implemented in the cloud and slowly we’ll see the move to main markets pretty soon and that’s pretty exciting.”

After the ION Markets incident in early February, market participants are much more aware of the cybersecurity challenges they could face at any given time. Guy Melamed has no doubt that a cloud-based exchange powered by Exberry would be able to handle an attack better than an on-premise solution and recover faster from such an incident. Disaster recovery and cybersecurity capabilities are part of the package, he said.

“After a year everyone’s convinced and moves to the cloud”

Exberry’s cloud-native architecture runs on multi-cloud but can also run on-premise. Melamed explained they run cloud implementation next to an on-premise implementation in order to help customers compare both options in terms of downtime, savings, reliability, and more. “After a year everyone’s convinced and moves to the cloud.”

The solution features a matching and trading engine that is asset-agnostic, cloud-agnostic, and even blockchain-agnostic if the client uses decentralized ledgers. The modular, end-to-end exchange infrastructure is offered as a white label that can be launched in a matter of minutes, available on web and mobile, he said, adding that Exberry counts with a very broad network of partners via API, but clients can also bring their own.

“A model that is highly innovative, highly flexible, and cost-saving. Traditional products wrapped in new tech that changes the way you manage markets.”

Guy Melamed can think of one disadvantage of a cloud-based exchange

When asked about the disadvantages of moving to the cloud, Guy Melamed could only think of one: a customer is limited to the existing hardware that cloud providers are supplying, but that seems to be a price most are willing to pay in order to avoid spending millions on building and maintaining their own data center, hardware, and security. “Again, AWS has an amazing offering of hardware, covering all kinds of requirements, data sensitivity, and security sensitivity. You see that in other cloud providers as well”.

Exberry helps exchange operators that have been running markets on-premises for decades to develop their own cloud strategies and make the paradigm shift. “Once they make it, they open their eyes and see the change in the manpower, the business they attract, and time-to-market.