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

It’s Getting Better …

Subscribe to our newsletter

… Getting better all the time. That’s my assessment of the economy as far as spending on IT by Wall Street is concerned. Sorry, having just picked up the remastered Beatles classic Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, I couldn’t resist tapping Lennon/McCartney’s track 4 title for this blog post.

I’ll offer just a couple of data points. First, near to home for me, the record numbers that attended last month’s High Performance Computing on Wall Street event. Nearly 20 world-class sponsors supported the day, the exhibit space was sold out, and the entire event was, as Intersect 360 Research’s analyst CEO Addison Snell put it, “packed.”

Another item of news piqued my attention the other day. Mellanox Technologies – a data centre networking vendor – is raising its third quarter financial guidance to a record $32 to $32.5 million – that’s up 26% on the second quarter, and 11% on its 2008 third quarter. We’ll have to wait until October 21 for the final figures but the news is very good. Mellanox’s InfiniBand and Gigabit Ethernet technology underpins low latency trading architectures, data centre virtualisation and cloud computing. Make the connection.

And to put these signals in context, think back just a year to the death of Lehman Brothers and those botched bailouts, and one would have had to then agree with Lennon’s pessimistic contribution to that song, that “It can’t get no worse.”

A final note, staying with the Beatles theme, is to say thanks to Blade Network Technologies CEO Vikram Mehta for gifting copies of The White Album to fellow participants in the HPC on WS panel on “Building The World’s Fastest Trading Network” … and of course – while the company is not allowed to mention it – we now know the role being played by Blade in NYSE Euronext’s ambitious plans, which represent its own vote for the future.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Upcoming Webinar: The future of market data – Harnessing cloud and AI for market data distribution and consumption

25 June 2025 10:00am ET | 3:00pm London | 4:00pm CET Duration: 50 Minutes Market data is the lifeblood of trading, but as data volumes grow and real-time demands increase, traditional approaches to distribution and consumption are being pushed to their limits. Cloud technology and AI-driven solutions are rapidly transforming how financial institutions manage, process,...

BLOG

Nasdaq Suspends High-Speed Trading Service Amid Regulatory Scrutiny

Nasdaq has halted a high-speed trading service following concerns raised by competitors and regulatory scrutiny from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The service, which offered select clients access to lower-latency hollow-core fiber optic cables, was not publicly disclosed and had not undergone the SEC’s rule-filing process. Low-latency network provider McKay Brothers brought the...

EVENT

AI in Capital Markets Summit London

The AI in Capital Markets Summit will explore current and emerging trends in AI, the potential of Generative AI and LLMs and how AI can be applied for efficiencies and business value across a number of use cases, in the front and back office of financial institutions. The agenda will explore the risks and challenges of adopting AI and the foundational technologies and data management capabilities that underpin successful deployment.

GUIDE

AI in Capital Markets: Practical Insight for a Transforming Industry – Free Handbook

AI is no longer on the horizon – it’s embedded in the infrastructure of modern capital markets. But separating real impact from inflated promises requires a grounded, practical understanding. The AI in Capital Markets Handbook 2025 provides exactly that. Designed for data-driven professionals across the trade life-cycle, compliance, infrastructure, and strategy, this handbook goes beyond...