In addition to adding 28 new customers in 2008, 29West grew the staff by 60 percent during the year, adding sales and technical staff in each of its Asia, Europe, NYC and Chicago business centers. With the strong performance in 2008, 29West ultra low-latency messaging solutions are now deployed in more than 120 firms around the globe, making 29West the clear industry leader in ultra low-latency messaging solutions worldwide.

Founded in 2002, 29West was first to market with the application-to-application design model that has become the de facto standard for the world's most latency-sensitive market data applications. In 2006, 29West introduced the first ultra low-latency, persistent messaging solution and is the most widely deployed brokerless guaranteed messaging solution in the market today.

"In a very challenging economic climate, we are still seeing record quarters, beating our annual targets and growing the deal size," said 29West Founder and CEO Mark Mahowald. "We have a strong deployment base in projects as diverse as FX trading solutions; exchange data distribution, order flow and execution; smart order routing; algo trading; and compliance applications in large banks, hedge funds and Internet-based trading applications worldwide."

According to Mahowald, this broad customer base and solution set provided a strong pipeline for the company in 2008 and they expect to grow at more than 50 percent in 2009. "Though the markets have tightened up due to cash concerns," Mahowald added, "many of the leading firms are taking action in this climate: they see an opportunity to revamp legacy messaging systems and come to market with next generation infrastructure, which will ensure they are driving the next wave of industry growth. The bottom line is 29West products are being deployed because they enable immediate improvements in profitability."

Industry experts observe the aggressive adoption of electronic trading technologies, in conjunction with the fragmentation of the equity and options markets by new exchanges, ECNs and dark pools, has driven the need to manage dramatically higher market data volumes with ever lower latency.

"Firms trading equities and exchange-traded derivatives are investing more money in low-latency networks and data acceleration technologies to make electronic trading decisions at an increasingly faster pace," said Larry Tabb, founder and CEO of TABB Group.

29West has seen record growth in all regions around the globe, but has seen particular strength in Europe, with revenue doubling year over year. "We are very pleased with the market acceptance of 29West in London and Europe and expect to more than double revenue in 2009," said Annalisa Sarasini, 29West managing director EMEA. "We have tripled our technical team in 2008 and have also doubled the sales and marketing staff to meet the tremendous market demand," Sarasini added.