News, Ideas, Insight
Press Release:
Options IT Names Former JonesTrading SVP as Director of Sales for North America
New York — May 3, 2010 — Options IT, a leading provider of high-performance technology Infrastructure-as-a-Service, ultra-low latency market data and connectivity for hedge funds, proprietary trading shops, investment banks and brokerages, today announced industry veteran Tim Dillon has been appointed as the firm’s Director of Sales for North America.
Prior to joining Options IT, Mr. Dillon was Senior Vice President at JonesTrading, where he oversaw the firm’s electronic trading sales effort. Prior to JonesTrading, Mr. Dillon was Vice President of Sales at NYFIX, where his focus was electronic trading and connectivity sales to the buy-side client base. Mr. Dillon’s other prior experience includes sales and trading roles at Cantor Fitzgerald, Banque Indosuez (now Calyon, Credit Agricole CIB) and Credit Commercial de France.
In his new role, Mr. Dillon will share North American sales oversight of Options PIPE services with Jason Elmer, Head of Sales for North America at Options IT. PIPE services include Velocity, an ultra-low latency market connectivity and application hosting service; Expand, a fully managed application hosting service for the front-, middle- and back-office; and Core, a fully managed and supported desktop and mobile business technology service.
“Tim’s vast experience in the industry makes him an ideal appointment as North America sales director,” said Nigel Kneafsey, CEO of Options IT. “His hire is the latest in a series of additions to our quickly growing North American team. During the last few years, we’ve seen tremendous growth as firms increasingly see outsourced technology infrastructure as an optimal way to reduce costs, improve performance and add the flexibility to scale their business up or down in real time as their business needs dictate.”
Trading Up-On Someone Else's Software and Servers
3 May 2010
...Options IT is one such firm, providing what it calls a fully-managed, high-speed technology infrastructure for trading firms. It works with more than 150 hardware or software based application providers that span front, middle and back office activities. High frequency traders can simply drop in their proprietary or third-party trading applications and the infrastructure-as-a-service structure takes care of everything else on the hardware, market data and hardware side....
Press Release:
Options IT Optimizes Velocity Market Connectivity Service to Provide Lowest-Latency Access for European Markets
Six-month Project Prompted by Recent Growth of High-Frequency Trading Strategies Among European Market Participants
NEW YORK — April 12, 2010 — Options IT, a leading provider of high-performance technology Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), managed application hosting, and ultra- low latency market connectivity for the buy-side and sell-side, today announced it has optimized its Options PIPE® Velocity market connectivity service to provide lowest- latency access to the major European trading venues.
The six-month optimization project was prompted by the recent growth of high-frequency trading strategies being executed by European market participants. PIPE Velocity is an ultra-low latency market data and managed hosting service designed to ensure high- speed performance for latency sensitive trading and risk applications.
The PIPE Velocity service enhancement across the European markets follows a similar optimization project that Options IT undertook in the U.S. in 2005, as trading firms began looking to reduce all possible latency in their U.S. trading strategies.
“The growth of high-frequency trading strategies that we’ve seen in the U.S. during the last several years is now beginning to play out in the European market,” said Nigel Kneafsey, CEO at Options IT. “We anticipate this trend will only accelerate as liquidity continues to fragment across new and existing trading venues resulting in rapidly increasing market data rates. Consequently, there’s now a race on to provide clients trading the European markets with the closest, fastest access to markets on which they’re executing their strategies.”
Uncertainty Over Volcker Rule Impacts Proprietary Trading Desks
29 March 2010
...While lobbying groups are working on defeating, or at least watering down, the proposal, the Volcker Rule needs to be considered seriously, as it could impact the supply of liquidity generated by proprietary desks that also function as market makers in equities, options, futures and other instruments. According to Nigel Kneafsey, CEO of Options IT, if the Volcker Rule were to pass Congress, it would lead to a major restructuring of the trading business...
Commodities Traders Increasingly Adopt Algorithms
29 March 2010
...Nigel Kneafsey, CEO of Options IT, a provider of high-performance trading technology infrastructure as a service, says automated trading strategies are expanding into commodities. ...“It's a less-trodden path than, say, equities, but the facilities are there to do it if one has the right strategy," Kneafsey points out, suggesting that there is greater opportunity in commodities for electronic strategies to take advantage of market inefficiencies...
Options IT Adds Market Data Accelerator
March 2010
...The builder of infrastructure-as-a-service technology added Exegy Inc.'s market data accelerator, called Exegy Ticker Plant, to the list of feed handler options on its platform that high-frequency, collocated traders can use to speed up market data delivery...