Globalization and intense competition are driving the need for more powerful and cost-effective solutions in financial-services applications such as real-time securities trading, application integration and credit-card fraud prevention.
These market forces are particularly strong in the securities industry, where high-volume transaction-processing networks provide the critical infrastructure for pre-trade decision support, order entry and execution, and post-trade clearing and settlement.
In pre-trade decision-making, securities traders and investment managers need real-time trading and risk management solutions that enhance their competitive edge. To enable faster trading decisions - while delivering rich information flows, powerful analysis tools and functionality - advanced trading applications rely on Solid Data solid-state disks. Examples include Orc Software’s trading environment, as well as a number of proprietary trading applications.
For trade execution, major trading firms and exchanges use Solid Data solid state disk to accelerate their transaction-processing networks and to speed the interchange of messages between applications. Customers use Solid Data products with message-oriented middleware (MOM) applications such as IBM’s MQ Series, and Solid Data is partnering with other messaging and middleware vendors to extend the speed and flexibility of their solutions.
In post-trade processing, major initiatives include an industry-wide speed-up in the processing of securities-trading transactions. In the U.S., the Securities Industry Association (SIA) is moving toward "T+1" - meaning that transactions will be settled within one day after the trade, rather than three days as currently allowed. This requires brokerages, exchanges and clearing agencies to complete the move from paper to on-line handling of transactions, and from batch to real-time processing of trades.
According to Gartner Group, many financial industry participants are already talking about "T+0" - effectively moving to real-time, end-to-end integration of all trading operations. These straight-through processing (STP) initiatives are part of a broad-based imperative that Gartner calls the Zero-Latency Enterprise.
To accomplish real-time processing of millions of securities transactions, while maintaining accurate and secure records of those transactions, financial services firms must deploy new applications - and integrate a number of existing front-office and back-office applications into cohesive, resilient, high-speed transaction networks - with no data loss. This will require substantial investments over the next several years. The US securities industry expects to invest more than $8 billion on the T+1 initiative by 2004, with the investments peaking in 2002 or 2003; some analysts suggest that these estimates are conservative. Moreover, global financial service providers must address similar requirements for worldwide operations, further increasing the magnitude of this industry investment initiative over the next several years.
To comply with these industry-wide requirements, to reduce risks and costs, and to remain competitive and increase customer satisfaction, financial service providers are increasingly deploying Solid Data solid-state disks as a standard infrastructure component in real-time transaction processing and application integration.