Osaka Exchange has selected Nasdaq’s Eqlipse Trading and Market Surveillance platforms as part of a major modernisation of its derivatives infrastructure, positioning the exchange for increased scale, resilience, and long-term competitiveness.
The deployment will see OSE adopt Nasdaq’s next-generation trading and surveillance technology as the foundation for a new derivatives platform, supporting multi-asset trading, ultra-low latency performance, and enhanced market integrity controls. The initiative represents a significant expansion of the long-standing technology partnership between Nasdaq and Japan’s financial services ecosystem.Volume growth and modernisation pressure
Derivatives markets globally are experiencing sustained volume growth alongside increasing product complexity and longer trading hours. For exchange operators, this combination is placing pressure on infrastructure originally designed for lower message rates, narrower product sets, and more predictable trading patterns.
OSE’s decision reflects a broader industry reassessment of whether existing derivatives platforms can continue to scale in line with market growth. Rather than focusing on incremental upgrades, exchanges are increasingly taking a platform-level view of modernisation to ensure they can accommodate future volumes, introduce new products efficiently, and maintain consistent performance under peak conditions.
“Over the past two years, derivatives volumes have risen sharply, forcing exchanges to confront where that growth leads,” observes Magnus Haglind, Head of Capital Markets Technology at Nasdaq, in conversation with TradingTech Insight. “In many cases, it is no longer about incremental capacity increases, but about whether existing platforms can scale at all. That often drives a broader rethink of core architecture – from risk controls to APIs – and a decision on whether to extend ageing systems or move to a next-generation platform designed to last another decade or more.”
Legacy architecture risk
As trading activity increases, the scalability and resilience characteristics of existing exchange platforms become more visible, says Haglind. Legacy architectures may require additional infrastructure to support higher volumes or expanded functionality, increasing operational complexity.
“All platforms have inherent design limits,” he notes. “The challenge is not just capacity, but whether systems can scale efficiently without costs escalating or risk controls becoming bottlenecks. As volumes rise, weaknesses in resilience, recovery, and change management become more pronounced. At that point, legacy platforms stop being a cost issue and start becoming a structural risk to market integrity and growth.”
Recovery expectations have also become more stringent, with exchanges expected to maintain robust primary and disaster recovery environments. These factors are contributing to reassessments of how existing systems are maintained and extended over time, particularly where platforms are approaching the later stages of their lifecycle.A buy and build approach
Exchange operators continue to adopt a range of approaches to technology development, often combining third-party platforms with internally developed components. Core trading and surveillance systems typically require specialised, performance-critical software integrated with hardware and network infrastructure.
“Trading systems are highly specialised, performance-critical environments, with tightly coupled optimisations across software, hardware and networks,” observes Haglind. “Building and operating them requires significant operational skills, with very visible consequences if something goes wrong. That is why most exchanges favour a buy-and-build model – using proven core platforms and focusing internal effort on differentiated functionality around the match rather than maintaining the entire stack.”
In this context, many exchanges now source established platforms for core functions while retaining flexibility to configure systems or develop additional capabilities where required. OSE’s selection of Nasdaq Eqlipse aligns with this approach, providing a deployed trading and surveillance platform as the basis for its derivatives operations.
Eqlipse platform scope and direction
Nasdaq Eqlipse is positioned as a configurable trading platform designed to support multiple market models within a single infrastructure. The platform supports multi-asset trading, standardised APIs, and scalable architecture to accommodate changes in volume and market structure.
The inclusion of Nasdaq Market Surveillance technology integrates surveillance capabilities into the derivatives platform, using analytics and automated techniques to support monitoring and investigation activities. Nasdaq positions Eqlipse as part of a broader technology offering used by exchanges and market infrastructure providers globally.
“Eqlipse is designed around configurability rather than custom development, allowing multiple market models – such as auctions, dark pools, and order books – to run in parallel on a single platform,” says Haglind. “Combined with a unified gateway framework and software-defined infrastructure, this creates a more efficient and adaptable exchange environment, supported by quarterly releases that introduce new capabilities and drive continuous improvement. The next phase is deeper integration with CI/CD pipelines and the use of agentic AI to improve how markets deploy, test, and manage change.”
For OSE, the deployment forms part of its ongoing technology modernisation programme. More broadly, the announcement reflects continued investment by exchange operators in core trading and surveillance platforms as derivatives markets evolve.
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