Hello and welcome to another edition of Orc News. We have a lot of updates that we are pleased to share with you.  We've received great feedback on our new and expanded solutions offering and interviewed Orc's Head of Product Management, Martin Nilsson, to further explain the enhancements. We've also made updates to Orc Trader+ and are in the process of introducing a new customer portal. Finally, Orc organized a global roadshow which included a series of events in Milan, Hong Kong, Toronto and Chicago during May. If you missed out on them, we have included a short summary with pictures from each of them for you to enjoy.   

Warmest regards,
The Orc Team

Leveraging partnerships and managing change: How Orc makes business grow Last year, Orc unveiled the company’s new strategic roadmap, including an enhanced and expanded solutions offering for Trading, Electronic Execution and Professional Services. With a well-received message to the markets, Orc wanted to further explain what drove the company to review its offering, the future plans for the Orc platform and product suite, and how Orc’s clients and partners will benefit from the new offering. Read More.

Martin Nilsson, Head of Product Management, talks about Orc’s enhanced offering and the drivers for the change.

Heads up - new splash screens and toolbar buttons for Orc Trader +

The financial industry is always changing, and so is Orc. Now we are proud to introduce the latest Orc Trader+, which adds new features together with an updated user interface. We have developed new splash screens and replaced a set of toolbar buttons inside the Orc Trader+ client. The new contemporary look is simple, yet powerful.  Read More.

Orc adds connectivity to NASDAQ OMX NLX

This week Orc announced connectivity to NASDAQ OMX NLX (NLX), the London based derivatives market for trading a range of both short term interest rate (STIRs) and long-term interest rate (LTIRs) euro- and sterling-denominated listed derivatives products. Read More. 

Regional Updates: Performance and next generation market data platform

For the Americas, Orc has during the quarter put considerable efforts on performance. With CME, mass quoting performance has improved up to 40%. For TSX, median latency for order entry has improved significantly and the 99th percentiles are lowered.

We are also preparing for HKEx’s next generation market data platform, Orion Market Data for derivatives markets (OMD-D), set for launch in Q3 2014. The OMD-D interface will replace both PRS+ and Network Gateway interfaces. Later in June, Orc will have a release which includes support for the Derivatives Premium (DP) and Index data feeds.

For EMEA, focus has primarily dealt with market upgrades: Eurex T7 2.1 in May, Genium INET 4.0220 and Oslo Millenium 8 in June, followed by the EuroTLX Millenium migration in July.

To find out more about Orc´s global, low-latency market access as well as markets included, please click here.

Orc launches new customer portal

Orc is currently building a new customer portal, scheduled for launch this fall. The new portal is designed to deliver personalized content, providing all Orc customers with easy access to information related to their licensed Orc products.  

Customers may use the portal to request customized information by subscribing to Orc products of interest. The new customer portal will also bring customers closer to Services, by sharing information about open and resolved support cases.

All this comes with a new user-friendly interface as well as improved upload and download functionality, with high security for critical information. Once the migration plan is set, all customers will be notified that the new portal is available and asked to log in to create a new personalized account. More information will follow closer to the launch date.

Following up on the launch of our enhanced and expanded solutions, Orc has arranged global roadshows for meeting with clients and prospective customers, delivering a broad introduction to our Trading, Electronic Execution and Professional Services offerings. The roadshows took place in Milan, Hong Kong, Toronto and Chicago in May 2014. In total, the roadshows brought together 225 industry leaders and market participants to discuss how Orc’s move beyond trading screens to becoming a trading technology solutions provider will help make business grow. Orc also addressed challenges facing the derivatives space and requirements for next generation technology.		Orc’s Chicago Roadshow featured a panel that discussed requirements for next generation technology.
From panel discussions to keynote speakers and networking opportunities, the roadshows brought our regional communities together to appreciate Orc's global new strategy. We now look forward to continued collaboration and discussions with our clients in order to provide superior, efficient solutions for their trading technology needs.  Read More.

Processor affinity - when latency matters more than anything else

Orc has recently been doing some interesting latency analysis with respect to processor affinity. This shows that properly configured processor affinity has a huge impact on latency: what is the best latency number during normal operation becomes the average latency number with proper CPU-affinity configuration, with the added benefit of significantly reduced variance. Read More.