It will provide comprehensive data center solutions for pre/post trade service providers, the buy side, and sell side communities in the equity, options, futures and currency markets.

Switch and Data's Financial Services Practice was developed to help financial services companies design, develop, and deploy infrastructure solutions to meet challenges including:

• Speed and Scale - As the need for low-latency market data and trade execution grows, Switch and Data provides an advantage with locations that offer multiple high-performance interconnection choices in close proximity to liquidity providers in New York, Chicago and Toronto. Another challenge is scaling to meet the increase in trade and market data volumes driven by financial volatility and SEC regulation. Switch and Data's high-performance 200 watts per square foot standard supports the order management, market data and matching engine scalability to support current and future growth requirements.
• Ecosystem Access - Switch and Data understands that successful electronic trading operations are built on access to the right markets and liquidity providers. Switch and Data sites house hundreds of fiber providers, carriers, managed service providers and financial Extranets. Switch and Data has the ability to interconnect its customers with the ecosystem of pre- and post-trade providers, and the sell-and-buy side communities in North America's leading financial markets.
• Reliable and Cost Effective -Switch and Data works with a customer to design and configure the cage or cabinet space and power specifications to support its unique infrastructure needs. This ability to customize helps optimize capital expenditures. In an industry where downtime equals lost revenue, Switch and Data also offers remote technical support to deploy, maintain and troubleshoot customers' equipment. The company's certified processes and procedures for security and alarm monilarm monitoring, scheduled infrastructure testing, fast incident response and proactive communication provide maximum resilience and reliability for its customers' operations.

"Regulatory changes and fragmented liquidity have driven an explosion of market data volume and the need for highly secure data center space," said John Panzica, Vice President of Switch and Data's Financial Services Practice. "Switch and Data's new practice understands this demand and helps customers develop custom solutions to meet their ever-growing low-latency connectivity, space and power needs in North America's leading financial centers."

With more than 40 years of combined financial services technology experience, Switch and Data's experts help firms develop and deploy the best infrastructure, connectivity and latency solutions to keep ahead of their competitors.

"As the need for processing power and speed has increased dramatically, so too has the demand for data center space in proximity to major market centers," said Kevin McPartland, Senior Analyst, TABB Group. "A team dedicated to supporting financial services clients is crucial for data center providers looking to fill this need."