ACADEMIA

Q9 Networks (Q9) announced that it has been selected by NYSE Technologies, the commercial technology unit of NYSE Euronext (NYX), to host a Secure Financial Transaction Infrastructure (SFTI) access centre.  The agreement will extend the SFTI backbone into Q9’s Toronto data centre, enabling Canadian customers to directly access services over the global capital markets network. Created for the financial services community in 2002, SFTI is built to facilitate large quantities of electronic quotes, trades and market data traffic while ensuring reliable, ultra-low latency access to NYSE Euronext’s markets and other global trading venues and firms, including more than 1,300 market participants. Under the terms of the multi-year agreement, Q9 is providing NYSE Technologies with secure and redundant physical infrastructure in one of its high-availability data centres. With this new installation, financial services customers within the Q9 data centre will be able to cross-connect into a suite of low-latency trading services available on SFTI. Customers outside of the facility will also be able to receive SFTI services by connecting into the Q9 access centre. “Co-locating in Q9’s state-of-the-art data centre further strengthens the reach and connectivity of the SFTI global trading network,” says Don Brook, Head of Infrastructure, NYSE Technologies. “Q9 has attracted a strong base of trading firms, including a number of SFTI customers that will benefit from even greater market access, reduced connectivity costs and enhanced performance through this new access centre.” Q9 designs, builds and operates its data centres to meet the most demanding IT infrastructure requirements, including the increased power and cooling demands of today's high density computing devices. Customers connect to the Internet via Q9's unique network and are protected by Q9's 100 per cent, SLA-backed uptime guarantees on both power and network availability. Customer equipment and data centre environmental parameters are monitored 7x24 by Q9's Control Centre, staffed by experts versed in all aspects of IT and facilities management. “We are very pleased to be hosting the NYSE Technologies’ SFTI network at Q9,” says Q9 Chief Executive Officer, Osama Arafat . “Our reputation for security and reliability has been instrumental in establishing us as the data centre provider of choice for Canada ’s financial community. With this announcement, we further extend that reputation and enable Canadian market participants to take advantage of direct access to NYSE Technologies’ high-quality, low-latency trading network.”