The Company: Leading software-as-a-service solutions provider to buy-side financial institutions. Through strategic partnerships with key market data and trade processing providers such as Calypso Technology, Reuters, and Markit Group, this specialized ASP provides clients with immediate access to a wide array of world-class capabilities and integrated technology solution to firms trading sophisticated cross-asset strategies.

Marketcetera products used:

• Marketcetera Automated Trading Platform
• Developer integration tools
• Market Data Adapters and Certified Broker Connectors

Business Challenge: Find a cost-effective way to integrate multiple applications in its Trading Platform Software Suite.

Solution Benefits:

• Simple integration with other applications/systems
• Open source solution is extremely cost-effective
• New strategies can be implemented rapidly and easily — in just weeks

THE CHALLENGE

As a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions provider to buy-side financial institutions, this service provider has built multiple hosted instances of Calypso for a variety of funds. Yet, these large-scale implementations were costing the company millions to develop. The service provider wanted to find a way to develop its own tailored trading systems that would provide the same benefits as these large-scale implementations, without the large price tag. To this end, the service provider adopted Marketcetera, believing that Marketcetera’s open source approach and comprehensive integration capabilities would help them achieve its goals.

THE SOLUTION

Since March of 2008, this ASP has been using Marketcetera to provide integration capabilities in its Trading Platform Software Suite, an offering that allows customers to monitor trades directly through Calypso, rather than through a diverse set of systems and brokers.

Marketcetera’s open source offering provided the company with the jumpstart it needed in developing this trading and routing system, and enabled the company to integrate the disparate trading applications easily and efficiently.

The service provider is using Marketcetera’s Automated Trading Server to route FIX order confirmations to Calyspo, enabling their customers to assess and balance their portfolios through one portal, without having to pay for additional services or integration fees. Without Marketcetera, they would have had to build custom FIX connectivity and other pieces of the puzzle. By using Marketcetera, the company found an ideal foundation for these elements and was able to focus its resources where they would be more beneficial.

THE BENEFITS

As trading desks have more and more products available to them, they need a way to integrate all of the pieces, but most vendors are not interested in providing this integration, as it might mean interfacing with a direct competitor. Marketcetera fills the gap for companies like this ASP, providing an open source, vendor agnostic system that lays a foundation on which companies can build a trading system that can also integrate with other systems easily. With Marketcetera, service providers are able to build their value added offerings with the best solutions available, without fear that they won’t be able to talk to one another, or that integration will be too costly.

THE FUTURE

This service provider is currently planning on building its own order management system (OMS) and Marketcetera will provide much of the foundation for this new product development. Due to changes in compliance rules, traders must be able to aggregate data from different places, and therefore need to integrate all of these different services is paramount. The flexibility, openness, and extensibility of Marketcetera — as well as its proven ease of use and integration capabilities — have already proven their value in partnership with this ASP and the company plans to build on this success.

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