Cloud Computing Making Impact on NYSE Euronext Traders

Stock exchange to launch new platform in partnership with EMC, VMware.

The Big Board operator is heading to the "cloud." NYSE Euronext plans to announce on Wednesday a new partnership with EMC Corp. and VMware Inc. that will allow financial institutions direct access to NYSE's services through the fast-growing technology trend known as cloud computing. This will allow Wall Street firms that elect to utilize the platform to use NYSE Technologies' servers for tools like historical market data and analytics, which previously were stored on the firms' own networks. The new feature, dubbed Capital Markets Community Platform, is intended to aggregate exchanges, broker dealers and buy-side participants. Customers who have already signed up prior to the platform's launch, expected Wednesday, include Pico Quantitative Trading, a division of Goldman Sachs Group that specializes in high frequency trading, as well as hedge fund Millennium Partners. "We're developing a set of services which enable customers to effectively outsource to us more and more of their commodity services that they depend on to run their businesses," said Ken Barnes, senior vice president of global platform services at NYSE Technologies."Inside our private network we're running applications and computing infrastructure to accomplish that goal." The announcement is part of NYSE Euronext's broader shift to utilize its new data center in Mahwah, N.J., and offer a range of technology services to a market that has become almost entirely electronic. Last year the exchange shifted all trading systems for its NYSE and Amex equities markets to the Mahwah facility. Space in the company's data center is being sold to hedge funds, banks and high-frequency trading firms looking to situate their servers as close to the exchange's trading engines as possible. The goal for Wall Street firms is to maximize speed in which trading is executed. The move to incorporate a cloud platform through the technology provided by VMware and EMC shows how the exchange can take advantage of a bigger trend that has swept through the technology sector. Cloud computing has become a catch-all term associated with the cost savings gleamed from moving applications online as opposed to IT departments buying and managing software and physical equipment. "NYSE is trying to position itself as sort of