Nomura has selected Colt to provide network infrastructure for its new European connectivity and collocation service. The Nomura initiative comes as the Japanese firm seeks to build on the strong European equities position of Lehman Brothers, whose European and Asian operations it took over a year ago. Nomura calls its new infrastructure a “next-generation ultra-low-latency trading service.” The offering will allow clients to make use of collocation facilities at data centres hosting Europe’s major exchanges and multilateral trading facilities. Colt provides dark fibre connectivity throughout the London area.
The Nomura set-up will also make use of a dedicated fibre-optic network connecting three major European cities to ensure fast market access for clients. According to Nomura, “The low latency network has been designed by Nomura’s technology and product teams utilizing the expertise of Colt, [which] will provide the network infrastructure for this solution.” Nomura’s co-location service is supported by a specialist infrastructure team, which will provide clients with a dedicated end to end service.
Nomura says the platform has also been designed to deliver a high level of security and seamless integration with its Prime Services products. Jeff Zorek, global co-head of prime product management at Nomura, says the firm has “combined leading networking and trading expertise with significant investments to achieve these goals.” Nomura plans to continue to work with Colt on future enhancements to the platform. Tanuja Randery, head of Colt’s Global Business Division, reckons the Nomura implementation “pushes the boundaries of latency.” He says the deployment makes use of Colt’s Next Generation Platform. Colt offers a wholly managed network and data centres in 13 countries, and provides last-mile fibre to 15,000 buildings.
Until now, its most visible claim to fame in the fast infrastructure space was the Turquoise contract, although it hosts seven of the top 20 global exchanges at its data centres. Just over a year ago, the company launched its Next Generation Network, based on IP and Ethernet transport, session control through an advanced Softswitch and an application layer for handling new services.
The NGN’s so-called Multi-Service Platform was initially launched for clients in London, Paris and Frankfurt, offering clients Colt Ethernet, Colt IP VPN and Colt IP Access services. The Carrier Ethernet-based MSP aims to offer high bandwidth services with lower latency, lower jitter and improved resilience. The system is based technology supplied by Nokia Siemens Networks, and uses a single box capable of delivering up to 16 services at speeds of up to 1 Gigabit/second. Colt reckons this saves space and power at customer premises and allows clients to add services or upgrade without the need for hardware changes.
Since it took over the European operations of Lehman Brothers, Nomura has climbed the ranks of London Stock Exchange (LSE) brokers by volume, reaching and retaining the number 1 spot in July, August and September 2009. The company believes the new collocation facility will aid future growth. “The launch of Nomura’s co-location network will help expand our market share across all European equities, and will assist us in becoming a top-five global trading house,” says Zorek. Nomura earlier this year adapted the former Lehman Brothers LMX suite of trading algorithms to form its ModelEx range, which has been launched for the Asian, European and U.S. markets.
