Borsa Italiana implemented a HP Cluster Platform - consisting of 130 HP BladeSystem BL series servers powered by AMD Opteron multi-core processors - at its data centres in Milan and Turin.

HP says the Cluster Platform provides the exchange with "a high level of space efficiency and a very low level of power consumption". This reduces hardware acquisition costs, floor space rental, energy management, software installation and operations costs. In addition, says the vendor, the back-office overhaul has dramatically reduced IT maintenance and installation time at the exchange.

Since deploying the HP technology Borsa Italiana has halved power and cooling costs at the data centres, says HP, and reduced its total cost of ownership by 50%, representing EUR1 million savings.

"We needed to do more with servers that could be easily deployed and managed, but at the same time, directly impact productivity and total cost of ownership," says Alessandro Pelosi, senior engineer, ICT department, Borsa Italiana. "We saw immediately that the new AMD Opteron-based HP BladeSystem would deliver improved manageability, faster automated system backups and generate far less heat, which allowed us to focus on integrating our servers instead of continuously adding new servers."

AMD says following the success of the initial implementation, the exchange plans to upgrade to its upcoming quad-core offering - dubbed Barcelona.

"I am expecting further heat reduction and more performance with Barcelona, even as our server stress loads increase," says Pelosi. "The decision was easy, and Borsa Italiana should be ready to deal with any volume of traffic, well into the future."

In a separate move, Borsa Italiana has teamed with its technology arm BIt Systems to develop a series of MiFID-compliant services.

The new services have been designed to help investors meet the post-trading transparency, transaction reporting and best execution requirements of the regulation, which will be introduced in November.

For post-trade transparency, the exchage says it will extend its existing off-market disclosure service for shares traded on its own markets to stock traded on European regulated markets. This data will be distributed to data providers and investors in real time through the new versions of Borsa Italiana's information service.

Borsa Italiana will also provide a new MiFID-compliant trade reporting system and will also offer investment firms a series of services that will comply with the new best execution rules.

The exchange also plans to post documentation and information relating to the directive on a new MiFID section its Web site.