Radianz joins with Arcontech for market data initiative

04/08/2003

Real-time market data specialist Arcontech is to offer its products and services over the Radianz network as part of a combined market data package that will allow institutions to create shared networks of data that bypass information vendors such as Reuters, Bloomberg and MoneyLine Telerate.

Under this new initiative Arcontech’s CityVision StarNet software will be used over RadianzNet to create data sub networks connecting producers and consumers of real-time market data.

Myron Tataryn, Head of European Sales, Radianz, commented, “Whilst Radianz remains neutral concerning the services and suppliers we support, clearly it makes sense to work with companies whose products add value to our own offerings. Arcontech has some interesting technology in its CityVision StarNet range that fit well with our model. The combination allows for rapid delivery of selective real-time channels between any or all of our 9000+ customer locations – a true market data community.”

Andrew Miller, managing director of London-based Arcontech, says that there have been attempts to establish such networks before, notably for replacement of vendors’ closed-user groups using the Internet. “The beauty of this deal is that is removes the key obstacle that has hampered deployment in the past – the lack of reliable, high-performance bandwidth,” he says. “Although StarNet works well over the public Internet, there’s not much in the way of service level guarantees available out there.”

Arcontech will offer three related services over RadianzNet: The first is a hosted market data contributions infrastructure, through which banks can send data for onward distribution to their chosen vendors. The required information can also be sourced directly from their internal market data distribution systems such as Reuters’ TIB, Triarch or RMDS systems. In either case the comms and infrastructure management is outsourced to Radianz, while system management can be retained or passed to Arcontech.

The second model provides a direct distribution channel from firms such as exchanges, interdealer brokers and specialist data providers to their clients and end users. This may be to add value to their service offering or to turn their market data into a profit centre rather than a cost centre. StarNet has flexible interfaces to allow end-users to retrieve the data, such as Arcontech’s TraderStation market data terminal and Excelerator Excel data pump, its interfaces to RMDS and via CityVision APIs available in ActiveX, COM and Java.

Thirdly, the technology allows the establishment of market data communities that can share data, disintermediating the traditional information providers. Any number of nodes at any number of banks can be interconnected, with each source acting as its own data centre or contributing to a central hub. Firms will be able to have direct control over who accesses their data, allowing them to develop revenue streams or create cooperative ventures.