About a-team Marketing Services
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry

A-Team Insight Blogs

Datacom Taps Formby, Releases Matrix Switch for Co-Lo

Subscribe to our newsletter

Datacom Systems – a vendor of network taps and matrix switches – has appointed Kevin Formby as its new president and CEO. Formby joins from packet capture/latency monitoring specialist Endace, and as such brings with him much experience of the financial markets vertical in general, and low-latency infrastructure in particular. On the heels of Formby’s on-boarding, Datacom has introduced a new matrix switch targeted at co-location environments.

Formby took up the rains of the Syracuse, NY-based company on February 1 and says the opportunity to lead such a company was a big attraction to him. He had been VP of business development at Endace since the middle of 2010, and worked at BT’s Radianz network and proximity centre unit before that. At Datacom, Formby’s mission will be to raise the company’s profile, hone the sales and marketing process, and to direct specific product development efforts for specific verticals.

For sure, financial markets will be one vertical to get attention says Formby, who notes the introduction of the company’s new SingleStream 2222 matrix switch, allowing a co-lo service provider or trading firm to readily and passively tap into as many as 80 1gE and 10gE network connections, to feed network and latency monitoring devices, such as those from Endace, Corvil, TS-Associates, etc. Less than five nanoseconds of addition latency is inserted into the tapped connection.

Formby says that the new switch – along with its sister 2212 offering – is running in production at a major co-lo service provider, who has not sanctioned publication of their name. But he can say that it’s being used to monitor more than 100 10gE connections supporting electronic trading applications.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Recorded Webinar: Agility as Alpha: How Trading Infrastructure Determines Who Wins in Volatile Markets

Tariff shocks, geopolitical realignment and macroeconomic regime shifts are redrawing the investment landscape faster than most firms’ technology stacks can keep up. For hedge funds and asset managers, the ability to move quickly into new asset classes, geographies or strategies is no longer just an operational concern – it is a front-office differentiator and, increasingly,...

BLOG

Market Data Distribution Parity: Redefining Fairness

By Scott Schweitzer, Independent Consultant, LDA Technologies. Electronic exchanges play a vital role in the financial industry, providing a robust and trusted forum for trading and execution without issue. But even so, the technology available to exchanges has traditionally led to discrepancies in data distribution, from microseconds to nanoseconds, which can be critical for latency-sensitive...

EVENT

TEST Event page 2

Now in its 15th year the TradingTech Summit London brings together the European trading technology capital markets industry and examines the latest changes and innovations in trading technology and explores how technology is being deployed to create an edge in sell side and buy side capital markets financial institutions.

GUIDE

AI in Capital Markets Handbook 2026

AI adoption in capital markets has moved into a more disciplined phase. The priority is now controlled deployment: where AI can be used safely, where it can deliver measurable value, and how outputs can be governed, monitored and evidenced. The 2026 edition of the AI in Capital Markets Handbook examines how AI is being applied...