Switch and Data (NASDAQ: SDXC), a leading provider of network-neutral data center and Internet exchange services, announced today that Forex Capital Markets (FXCM Holdings LLC) a leading global foreign exchange broker that caters to the retail and institutional markets in over 150 countries, will place its primary infrastructure in Switch and Data's North Bergen data center.
FXCM needed a venue that would help its customers trade with faster execution speed. Switch and Data can provide the space and power density to scale its infrastructure to accommodate its rapid growth and premier order routing technology giving customers faster fills with minimal slippage. Switch and Data's North Bergen, NJ site offered FXCM a home just 5 miles from Wall Street, with a choice of multiple low-latency network providers, and with high density power and cooling capacity.
Foreign exchange trading is the largest financial market in the world. According to industry sources, it has an average daily turnover of US$3.2 trillion. As of June 2009, FXCM handles an average of over $365 billion in notional volume traded each month on trading platforms offered by FXCM and routinely handles approximately 300,000 trades per day. FXCM had over 150,000 active accounts on its trading platforms, and more than $100 million in capital.
"Considering the uptick in trade volume in the currency markets, we needed a data center provider that met our near- and long-term needs. We chose Switch and Data's North Bergen site because of its close proximity to Wall Street and its robust and power-dense design. These enable us to fully leverage our current and future technologies as well as our market structure," said Brandon Palmer CIO, FXCM Holdings LLC. "In addition, because of the mission-critical nature of the FX trading environment, we wanted to ensure our customers nothing less than world-class service and the North Bergen site is built to support that."
"We are pleased that Forex Capital Markets chose Switch and Data to help it expand and support its increasing trade volume," said John Panzica, Vice President Financial Services Practice for Switch and Data. "As a valued destination for the financial community and a main tenant in our Financial EcoCenter located in North Bergen, Switch and Data now provides the financial services industry astry access to market data companies, carriers and trading firms for the best trade execution."
Switch and Data's North Bergen site offers the financial community space and power to scale their operations to keep pace with this drastic increase in transaction volumes. The secure 163,000sf data center provides 24/7 on-site and remote security surveillance, and multi-factor security authentication. The site is built to Switch and Data's latest high-performance standard and can support the latest high density power and cooling deployments with an N+1 design for all power and environmental systems. The site provides 24/7 on-site remote technical service and support, and live remote monitoring of all building and infrastructure alarm systems.