Continuing its expansion in the Asia-Pacific region, trading infrastructure specialist Pico has launched a new managed Taiwan colocation facility, at Chunghwa Telecom’s CHT Taipei IDC in Banqiao, New Taipei City. The facility will offer connectivity to the Taiwan Stock Exchange’s (TWSE) data centre, with plans for links to the Taiwan Futures Exchange (Taifex) and Taipei Exchange (TPEx), as well as interconnect all financial markets in APAC.
Pico’s live APAC data centres span Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea, which all connect to at least two of its Connectivity Hubs located in Hong Kong, Tokyo and Singapore. The firm is looking to complete its APAC build in 2021, with the addition of Australia, China, India, Malaysia and the Philippines to its global footprint.
Taiwan launched 24-hour continuous trading in March, replacing the previous call auction trading method. At the same time, Taifex introduced a real-time market data feed to facilitate trading strategies across futures and cash markets.
Pico subsequently launched the new colocation facility to offer firms agile, efficient and rapid access to Taiwan’s markets. Located within 100 metres of the TWSE / Taifex data centre, the facility offers lowest-latency connections to the markets’ respective trading engines. Pico also plans to offer dedicated or shared infrastructure options as well as hosting services, tailored technology solutions based on its global market data services, and infrastructure procurement. On-site Intellihands multilingual teams will provide 24/7 global support.
Pico managing director Roland Hamann says these new developments are “enticing many trading participants to include Taiwan markets in their global trading strategies.” To provide clients rapid access to Asian and global financial services data centres and marketplaces, Pico has connected the new facility to PicoNet, its private low-latency proprietary network mesh providing seamless global access to trading venues, outbound internet connectivity, and market data services around the world. It is supported by Pico’s analytics and monitoring platform, Corvil Analytics, the de-facto standard for analytics and visibility in the financial markets community.
Designed to host mission-critical systems, Pico says CHT Taipei IDC is the only data centre in Taiwan to achieve both the ANSI/TIA-942 Facility Rated 3 Certification and the Uptime M&O Stamp of Approval. It is also certified for the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and Service Organization Controls (SOC) reports.
