After three years in development, Bloomberg finally launched B-Pipe (formerly nicknamed PhatPipe) in July of last year. The platform-agnostic feed is designed to deliver Bloomberg data direct to proprietary and in-house applications at user banks and has been the focus of a major development by smaller third-party market data technology firms, including Wombat, Dealing Object Technology (DOT), HyperFeed Technologies, I-Deal Data Systems, Infodyne, and TS-Associates.

Wombat began development of its product in March 2005 and says it has been in active testing for six months. The firm says it is currently engaged in integration testing with multiple clients in the Europe and the US.

"There is a real buzz in the market at the prospect of pushing Bloomberg data into applications," comments Ron Verstappen, Wombat’s CEO. "The emergence of new vendor feed products is bringing fresh competition to the market which can only be good for the customer."

While Wombat stresses its data-feed independence as a selling point for its market data integration technology, Reuters has confirmed mounting speculation that it plans to enter the market with a B-Pipe feedhandler of its own.

"This work is being undertaken now, although we have not yet determined a date for the release of the feedhandler," says a spokesman. "The move is in line with our commitment as a company to openness on our Reuters Market Data System (RMDS) platform. The platform is used by the majority of the market and we know our customers increasingly value the openness it offers."

Such a move would be a major boost for Bloomberg, giving the firm a direct line to RMDS users at trading floors worldwide. It would also enable Reuters to shore up its dominant position in the market data distribution business, and ward off the threat from smaller rivals such as the Wombat Platform.