Ever wonder how much data is distributed by financial exchanges a day? What about an hour or even a second? I’ve tried to find the answer today, but the numbers are staggering. So with no consistent or concrete evidence to hand, let me sum this up with HUGE, TITANIC, ENORMOUS, GIGANTIC amounts of data.

These exchanges are profiting significantly from distributing data locally, but also increasingly, there are new markets to service. Often these are emerging markets, but the exchanges are struggling to push data to them – think China, India, or whole continents like South America. The problem is that the infrastructure is poor so financial exchanges are scampering to find a way to open up new revenue streams into these markets.

Exchanges and their customers are struggling to cope with the cost of leased lines which would typically be necessary to distribute fast moving and fast changing data. It costs a lot of money to distribute and receive data and when you are sending and receiving the amount I mentioned that cost is not insignificant.

But the Internet presents a problem – it can be slow and unreliable. Funneling data that needs to be real-time, down to the millisecond or less, and high quality, requires a better solution.

What are these financial exchanges to do? The answer is in a data distribution solution that can send fast changing data at speed, regardless of infrastructure limitations, to a large number of simultaneously connected users. It is also in the ability to intelligently understand the data being sent so that out of date, stale or redundant data is automatically removed. Instead, it is all about sending quality real-time market data across the Internet. And when you do that, you can now reduce the bandwidth consumption for yourself and your customers, and minimize your hardware utilization. You can now handle the cost of data distribution because it is significantly less.

With this capability, exchanges can distribute the same quality of data, typically provided only to the largest financial organizations, to the smaller players via the power of the Internet. They can also go a step further and distribute real-time data to tablets and smart phones whilst still maintaining the quality of the data provided. Just consider all the opportunities that exist when you can offer data without expecting prospects to pay for a leased line first to handle your data supply. The financial rewards can be huge and the markets endless.

When financial exchanges utilize the technology available to distribute data across any type of Internet connection and ensure high performance and quality of service, they will open up significant new revenue opportunities.