BT’s decision to deploy a range of BT Radianz services at Interxion’s Brick Lane, City of London data centre marks the company’s second move into a carrier neutral collocation data centre in London following a deal to run services out of Equinix data centres, including a London location, in April last year. The company says its decision was influenced by client demand and Interxion’s emergence as a place where the market has pooled. It is also considering a move into other data centres in London.
BT Radianz services went live at the Interxion data centre early this year and include Radianz Cloud, which provides connectivity from Interxion to end points of BT’s networked financial community in 170 countries. The company is also offering Radianz Hosting services, which manage client infrastructure in the data centre, typically up to the trading application layer, and Radianz Venue Interconnect. At Interxion, Venue Interconnect provides what BT describes as direct engineered paths that are optimised for low-latency connectivity to exchange data centres in Milan, Stockholm, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo.
Michael Cooper, BT Radianz chief technology officer, says more Venue Interconnect paths will be added over time. He explains: “Our choice of data centres and Venue Interconnect connections reflects where the market is going. We have taken our capabilities and made them modular and flexible so that they can be applied to any location where there is a market. As new data centres are developed, market participants move between them and liquidity moves, we anticipate where the market will go and react to those movements.”
The company’s selection of the Interxion London data centre is a case in point. Cooper says: “We have extended our capability to include the Interxion London data centre because of the strength of the existing financial market ecosystem there that includes a number of our clients, markets they wish to access and their desire to reach other key liquidity venues in Europe and Asia.”
The Interxion data centre houses more than 200 financial services institutions as well as access points to more than 15 liquidity venues including NYSE Euronext, NYSE Liffe, Nasdaq OMX, Bats Chi-X Europe, the London Metal Exchange, Toronto Exchange, Singapore Exchange, Australian Exchange, Spanish Exchange, ITG Posit and Equiduct.
Interxion says the addition of BT Radianz services to its London base increases the value it can offer to its financial community. Patrick Lastennet, director of marketing and business development within the financial services segment of Interxion, explains: “The agreement with BT is good for us and in line with our strategy to maximise access points to global markets. Our mission is to be the preferred provider of access points in Europe to derivatives markets on a global scale. For example, our customers can now cross-connect to liquidity in Singapore at local cross-connect prices and non-European exchanges can access our local European customer base at a lower cost.”
With 33 data centres in 11 European countries, some of which already offer BT Radianz services as well as other vendor connectivity solutions, Interxion says its is growing by 15% to 20% a year in terms of new trading firms joining its community.
BT’s global services include access to Radianz Cloud from 21 data centres and Radianz hosting in 12 global locations. Radianz Venue Interconnect is available at nine shared data centres globally, providing low-latency connectivity to global liquidity venues.
Cooper says BT’s services are differentiated in the market by the company’s commitment to quality and low latency, and where necessary, optimised low latency on engineered paths into exchange data centres. He concludes: “We expose richness around our connectivity, giving us the ability to meet client needs more precisely. We also have experience across geographically diverse locations and provide services in a consistent way across geographies.”
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