Jake Beeman, who took over as general manager of Fixnetix this month following the departure of Steve Williams, has arrived with the remit to expand on the company’s vision for front-office transformation, with a specific focus on data, analytics and infrastructure.
Beeman took on his new role at Fixnetix on May 13, Prior to that he held similar positions at Options IT, Pico Trading and most recently ran the Global Real Time data business at Refinitiv.
He says he expects Fixnetix to be the entry point for front-office ambitions within the capital markets segment of DXC, leveraging the company’s various product offerings and scale in the space. These include pre-trade risk and execution solutions, connectivity and hosting options, which he believes provide a compelling package to financial institutions across the board. Fixnetix can also work with firms’ chosen in-house or third-party technology solutions, allowing them to build out a trading stack that meets their needs.
As well as Fixnetix’s own expertise and product set, Beeman says the offering will draw upon DXC’s professional services and consulting practice, as well as DXC’s strong balance sheet, which helps mitigate many of the risk concerns associated with core technology transformation projects.
One example of a use case is an unidentified options market maker, which was seeking to upgrade their electronic trading platform while improving time to market. According to Fixnetix, the firm wanted a platform that would offer competitive advantage in terms of performance but without expensive maintenance requirements.
With IT departments under pressure to deliver more for less, the investment bank decided to turn to a managed services solution on condition that it met specified guaranteed service levels and provided lower cost with full transparency. To meet these requirements, Fixnetix deployed a fully outsourced, fully managed solution that included “leading-edge hardware, optimised connectivity for reduced latency and colocation deployments.”
The greenfield deployment featured access to 20 US equity options and derivatives trading venues, 62 cabinets between four colocation sites, 200 network devices, 30 telecommunications lines and a largescale secure storage/retrieval system. The deployment amounted to a 650+ server estate and supported more than 400 trader desktops, laptops and tablets (for exchange floor users).
The physical infrastructure was underpinned by strict information security and compliance policies as designated by the client, and was supported by Fixnetix operational teams under a 24/7/365 services model that provided for on-site support for traders, network management and built-in technology refresh.
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