FinQloud is being pitched as an efficient, cheap and regulatory compliant option for financial services firms that are having to store and manage ever-growing amounts of data.

The system taps Amazon Web Services' (AWS's) cloud infrastructure and Nasdaq OMX's experience in providing technology and advisory services to exchanges, regulators and broker-dealers.

Financial services firms are currently faced with new compliance requirements which aim to increase transparency by providing regulators with access to more granular data, meaning greater volumes and costs.

Nasdaq OMX and Amazon say that FinQloud provides customers with a secure, "industry-only" cloud platform for financial services applications to help immediately reduce these technology, compliance and cost burdens.

As part of the initial launch, Nasdaq OMX plans two offerings: Regulatory Records Retention and Self Service Reporting. The first, available within months, will provide broker-dealers with a storage and retrieval tool to help meet SEC record retention obligations. The second 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 housed in private Nasdaq OMX data centres before directly connecting to AWS.

Eric Noll, EVP, transaction services, US and UK, Nasdaq OMX, says: "Working with AWS, the leader in cloud technology, demonstrates our commitment to provide innovative solutions to the financial services industry at large. FinQloud, as a protected warehouse for regulated data, fosters efficient and reliable markets for investors."

Andy Jassy, SVP, AWS, adds: "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."