New York and London just got nearer: FXecosystem CEO James Banister reveals all to FinanceFeeds

Today, FXecosystem has announced that it is taking the connectivity between London and New York to even faster speeds by upgrading onto Hibernia’s new Ultra 5 Express Circuit.

In doing so, FXecosystem can now offer clients a reduced RTD between London and New York of 63.36 milliseconds (previously 65.36 milliseconds). This drop in milliseconds in the roundtrip across the Atlantic will result in even lower latency and faster execution, enabling clients to maximise the number of trades processed per millisecond.

With the marked difference in the entire electronig trading structure in London compared to the proprietary and HFT-orientated centers of Chicago and New York, FinanceFeeds had a detailed conversation with James Banister, CEO of FXecosystem in order to demonstrate the importance of this infrastructure investment.

North America is the most sophisticated and well established region for proprietary trading firms, electronic exchanges and hedge funds, mostly based in Chicago and New York, however these differ tremendously from the liquidity providers and interbank sector in London. How will the increased connectivity bridge these two totally different sectors?

You are right, there is a big difference between these two sectors. However, what they both have in common is a focus on the speed of execution. Whether the banks and brokers are in New York or London, they want to maximise the number of trades processed per millisecond.

FXecosystem is one of the first organisations to be upgraded on Hibernia’s new Ultra 5 Express Circuit and this means we can now offer clients on both sides of the Atlantic a reduced RTD between London and New York of 63.36 milliseconds (previously 65.36 milliseconds), resulting in even lower latency and faster execution.

How does the Ultra 5 Express Circuit integrate into the Equinix data centers in LD4 (London) and NY4 (New York)? 

Hibernia’s Ultra 5 Express Circuit fibres are terminated in the LD4 and NY4 datacenters. FXecosystem has invested in capacity within Hibernia’s networks and access the circuit from these key datacenters.

A few years ago, colocation was THE low-latency connectivity buzzword. Do you think that the effectiveness of point to point connections and dedicated infrastructure is now taking precedence over commercial VPS products and colocation in data centers?

Co-location is now generally accepted as the way to reduce your latency – having your switch next to the cabinets where the pricing engine is creates a huge advantage for banks and brokers.

Point to point connections are the way most banks and brokers now look to connect – either as a cross connect or direct fibre connection. The focus now is all about dedicated connections. That’s why our Meet-Me-Rooms™(MMR), which provide dedicated cross connections, are such an attractive proposition for clients.

They provide a central point of connection to multiple sources of liquidity and cut down the number of connections that banks and brokers would have to put in place to achieve the same thing. There are real benefits in terms of cost savings and operational efficiencies. In essence, our Meet-Me-Rooms provide a single point of entry to connect multiple market participants on a global scale.

How is this solution capitalized, and do you think British firms, which are less HFT orientated than the prop shops of Chicago and New York, will see the cost advantage?

The cost is far less of an issue than the reliability and performance of the circuit. If clients see that their trades can be consistently executed one millisecond quicker they will see a huge advantage.

Let’s take a close look at FXeco-Eye.

FXecosystem is a real-time network performance monitoring and analytics tool which enables business units and network/trading system support teams to speed up the process of establishing the root cause of any network and trading issues. This means they can then troubleshoot network, application and connectivity issues without creating disruptions to business critical flows and can plan more effectively.

The visualization aspect of FXeco-Eye is really impressive. You can see how quickly your data is moving and see how that translates into your performance. You really can see the impact of the speed of execution on your business.

What type of customers do you expect to service on both sides of the Atlantic with the new solution?

Tier 1 and Tier 2 banks as well as the more sophisticated retails brokers. Our Tier 1 and Tier 2 banking clients have been added to the Ultra 5 Express Circuit and are already seeing the benefits of the increased capacity and speed. We will be adding other clients over the next few weeks.