Thanks to the opening of the new hub (consisting of two technology sites) in the Square Mile of London, SIA-SSB extends its multiservice broadband network infrastructure "SIAnet" even wider at international level, reaching a further 7 financial markets (Eurex, Xetra, Borsa Italiana, NYSE Euronext, CHI-X, CME and Turquoise). These now join the 4 already served (London Stock Exchange, MTS, Euro TLX and HI-MTF). Additionally, this will enable brokers to connect to the financial routing circuits.

With this new international expansion project, SIA-SSB completes the realization of the so-called "Financial Ring", a financial network with high technology content which puts customers in contact, via Data Centers in Milan and London, with the Production and Disaster Recovery systems of individual financial markets. It consists of a high speed infrastructure based on direct links allowing significant cuts in latency times of dealing activities, thanks to the greater proximity to all the major international trading venues, reduction in costs of infrastructure investment of at least 15% against traditional systems and generation of value in terms of efficiency, performance and operative simplification.

The SIAnet network guarantees high standards of reliability, total security and confidentiality in the transmission of data, thanks to innovative systems capable of carrying "end-to-end" encrypted messages throughout the entire infrastructure, without the possibility of anyone being able to access information relating to financial deals. The processing center in Milan monitors the entire traffic on the network in real time, detects any problems in the systems and can intervene, also remotely, guaranteeing continuity of service to the end user.

SIAnet thus confirms its position as the leading "peer to peer" technology architecture for the European financial community also for access to financial markets, as well as for connection to all platforms for processing of traditional payments (credit transfers and collections) and debit and credit cards, not to mention international payment circuits.

"In a European financial scenario going through a profound evolution, methods of market access are increasingly becoming a critical success factor for banks and financial brokers - commented Massimo Arrighetti, Chief Executive Officer of SIA-SSB - In order to exploit the opportunities arising from the growing competitiveness between the trading venues and the development of new generation markets, dealers must be able to count on technologies that guarantee high quality, reliability, immediacy and competitive costs, while at the same time guaranteeing total security, protection and confidentiality of transaction data. SIASSB's goal in creating a hub in London is to provide its customers with a single access point to the major international markets, placing at the service of the European financial community the Italian technological excellence gained over the past 30 years in the design of network infrastructures".

Over the course of 2009, SIA-SSB carried 11.1 terabytes of data (11.1 thousand billion bytes), with infrastructure availability equal to 99.999%. Through 592 nodes present in 20 European countries, the SIAnet network has managed around 3 million transactions daily, representing about one third of the total daily traffic circulating between Europe, the Middle East and Africa.