NASDAQ Turns to AWS to Power Its Financial Cloud

The NASDAQ OMX Group announced the launch of FinQloud, a new cloud computing platform powered by Amazon Web Services and exclusively designed for the financial services industry. Built as a platform for financial services applications, the new NASDAQ cloud provides technology and advisory services to exchanges, regulators and broker-dealers, all that operate within a complex global regulatory framework.

In launching its financial services cloud, NASDAQ OMX has pursued a different path than its leading rival among U.S. stock exchanges. Last year NYSE Euronext rolled out a cloud offering that allows financial traders to lease computing power at the NYSE’s new data fortress in northern New Jersey. Rather than hosting its cloud in its own data centers, NASDAQ has opted to outsource the infrastructure piece to Amazon Web Services.

As part of the initial launch, NASDAQ OMX plans to offer two solutions hosted on FinQloud: Regulatory Records Retention (R3) and Self Service Reporting (SSR). R3 will provide broker-dealers with a storage and retrieval tool to help meet U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Rule 17a-4 record retention obligations at substantially reduced cost and complexity. SSR will enable broker-dealers to perform fast, on-demand analysis and reporting on their stored trade data. All connections to FinQloud will be required to pass through a rigorous encryption key management system, scheduled to be available in the coming months.

"Financial services customers have unique regulatory requirements for many of their IT projects, and high expectations for operational performance," said Andy Jassy, Senior Vice President of Amazon Web Services. "With the strong reliability, low cost, unmatched platform capabilities, and agility that AWS provides, NASDAQ OMX's FinQloud offerings, R3 and SSR, are tailor-made for AWS and cloud computing. Storing and retrieving data can be done quickly, easily, and inexpensively.  And with the scalability, cost-effectiveness, and flexibility of the cloud, customers can quickly conduct analysis and reporting regardless of the amount of data.  With FinQloud, we're pleased that NASDAQ OMX will be able to combine their expertise in financial markets and regulatory compliance with the enterprise-class capabilities of the AWS Cloud."