FX firms gradually warming to cloud scalability

Brokers and traders are increasingly combining public and private cloud infrastructure to reduce costs, optimise connectivity and leverage trade analytics.

Retail FX brokers have become increasingly comfortable distributing liquidity to their clients via the cloud. However, once that liquidity is taken or distributed to or from the more institutional inter-dealer market, those venues are typically hosting and/or trading on co-location – physical, on-premise – infrastructure rather than cloud virtualised infrastructure.

Partnerships between exchanges and the major cloud providers may be more relevant to listed securities than over-the-counter (OTC) FX pairs to date. However, they will set a pattern for the rest of the industry as it starts to think about the inevitability of those very high frequency, low-latency trading venues running in the public cloud.

Many FX firms will favour hybrid cloud setups that safeguard intellectual property, leveraging cloud scalability for non-core activities

Tim Carmody, IPC

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