Through this collaboration, UNX becomes the first third-party provider to offer a service on the Community Platform's cloud infrastructure and helps accelerate NYSE Technologies' vision to empower customers by simplifying global market access and reducing trading friction.

Through its Community Platform, NYSE Technologies will distribute UNX's broker-neutral, open-technology front-end, Catalyst to deliver data and services from the NYSE Technologies' product portfolio to financial services firms. In addition, Catalyst's Software Development Kit and APIs will also enable broker-dealers, third-party vendors, and other institutional trading participants to rapidly develop applications for use in Catalyst.

Services offered from inside the cloud and delivered through Catalyst would include global market data, trade analytics, order and execution information tools, indications of interest (IOI), advertised trades (AT), and other data services, including trade and quote (TAQ) data, market imbalances and regulatory alerts.

"NYSE Technologies is focused on providing the industry's most secure, reliable infrastructure connecting the capital markets community to high-performance electronic trading applications worldwide. To create this virtual capital markets community, we are working with UNX to provide the framework for unified delivery and access to trading and data services, transaction destinations and market participants," explains Stanley Young, CEO of NYSE Technologies.

"Catalyst's open, fully extensible container will make it possible for industry professionals to easily integrate a wide variety of trading tools that leverage our expertise in markets, connectivity, infrastructure and technology. Our goal here is to empower financial firms to innovate and capitalize on market opportunities," he adds.

UNX CEO Thomas Kim comments that the collaboration aligns with UNX's unique value proposition of an open platform into which the buy side, vendors, brokersers and exchanges can build their own trading functionalities and extend services to a broader client base.

"This partnership with NYSE Technologies affirms the value of Catalyst, and allows us to jointly build a true global ecosystem of market participants who can access any trading technology from any broker, vendor or exchange from anywhere in the world," he states.

"Furthermore, we believe the extension of our SDK to the community to create custom plug-ins will drive innovation and ignite competition in the financial markets—just as open platforms have done for the mobile computing industry," Kim adds.

UNX's existing clients use the SDK to integrate, update and customize algorithms, portfolio trading and other electronic trading services such as analytics and risk management tools in the Catalyst platform.