On Wednesday,?BATS Global Markets (BATS) and Equinix,Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX), the global interconnection and data center company, announced that the exchange had chosen Equinix as its primary data center provider for all of the BATS exchange platforms, including the Direct Edge Exchanges – EDGA and EDGX.
This comes as BATS and Direct Edge announced their completed merger last month.?
As for the Direct Edge Exchanges, EDGA and EDGX, they will remain at their current location at Equinix?s NY4 data center in Secaucus, N.J. until January 2015 when they will migrate to BATS? technology in Equinix?s NY5 data center.
The choice of Equinix will make customers happy, according to?Chris Isaacson, Executive Vice President & Global Chief Information Officer, BATS. He said in a press release, “As we begin the integration of Direct Edge to the BATS technology, expanding our partnership with Equinix is a critical step for the expanded BATS Global Markets and, more importantly, our customers. Choosing Equinix as our primary data center provider, and leveraging its tremendous trading ecosystem in Secaucus, provides the type of continuity and cost efficiency which is paramount to these customers.?
Change will not come until 2015’s second quarter as BATS BZX and BYX Exchanges, and BATS Options, will move to NY5 from their current NJ2 location in Weehawken, N.J.
So who is Equinix? It houses the biggest collection of exchanges and trading platforms, top market data vendors, a myriad of service providers, and hundreds of buy-side and sell-side firms. The company’s New York-area data centers serve many of the world?s largest companies, including high concentrations of financial services companies such as BATS, and provide access to more than 700 businesses and 135 network service providers.
Highlights of the move incldue:?
- All BATS and Direct Edge Exchanges will operate on their respective technology in their existing data centers until the technical integration is complete in January 2015. All the latest integration details can be found at http://bats.com/edgeintegration.
- NY5 is a state-of-the-art data center that is part of the Equinix Secaucus campus. It is approximately one-half mile west of NY4 and can be accessed via an Equinix IBX cross-connect from both NY4 and NY2.
- BATS will maintain a network Point-of-Presence (PoP) in NY4 and NJ2 indefinitely. This will allow current Direct Edge Member connections in NY4 and BATS Member connections in NJ2 to access all BATS/Direct Edge Exchanges without interruption once they are moved to NY5.
- To ensure a seamless transition to NY5 while preserving the ecosystem in NY4, BATS will engineer connectivity from both NY4 and NY5 to all BATS/Direct Edge matching engines in NY5 to be equal latency for the foreseeable future.
- In addition to Secaucus, BATS utilizes Equinix?s London Slough data center campus LD4 which provides a secure, low-latency, high-performance trading environment for BATS Chi-X Europe?s integrated and dark electronic trading books.
- The BATS and Direct Edge Exchanges secondary data centers will remain in Chicago at the CH4 data center with a PoP at CH1.