In something of a coup for data centre operator Interxion, the London Metal Exchange will switch the primary site for its LME Select matching engine to Interxion’s LON-1 data centre near Brick Lane, effective October 1. LME has recently gone live at LON-1 with its secondary LME Select engine, which is based on upgraded infrastructure and matching technology from Swedish exchange platform provider Cinnober.
The planned switchover of its primary platform, currently located at the CenturyLink LO1 facility in Slough, 25 or so miles to the west of central London, could produce dividends for Interxion in the form of trading firms currently using proximity hosting facilities nearby seeking to relocate to LME’s Community Data Centre (CDC) proximity hosting service at LON-1 for closer, lower-latency access.
According to a notice to members distributed last week, LME’s head of market operations, Andrew Dodsworth, said the move “will result in an improvement in round-trip times from the LME’s Community Data Centre (CDC) proximity hosting service at the Interxion Data Centre.”
The notice says these latency improvements won’t be available to users at LME’s CDC at Equinix’s LD4 data centre in Slough, and indicates those wishing to benefit from the upgrade may wish to consider switching to the Interxion LON-1 CDC.
CenturyLink LO1 will become LME Select’s secondary site, and will be upgraded to match the performance at LON-1. Dodsworth stressed that connections between both the Equinix and Interxion CDCs and the matching engine sites will remain in place.
The LME may be the last of the major independent European trading venues without its own data centre. Most exchanges now operate their own facilities, and some offer colocation services to members as a premium value-added service.
