Patent No. 6,850,906, "Real-time financial search engine and method," issued last month by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office covers technology developed by Vhayu's co-founders, Tejpal Chadha and Kenneth Williams. Vhayu Velocity™, the firm's market data analysis platform utilises this patented technology currently deployed by investment banks, brokerages and hedge funds in New York, London and Tokyo.

"This patent is a credit to Vhayu's technological vision that continues to drive us to service the needs of our customers," said Jeffrey Hudson, CEO at Vhayu. "Our patented search technology is a critical component of our ability to capture, store and analyse tens of millions of simultaneous market data records in mere milliseconds. Our enterprise software helps high-volume traders tackle the increasing challenges of managing massive amounts of market data generated by tighter agency regulations, decimalisation and market fragmentation."

Vhayu's technology platform enables investment banks, prime brokers, hedge funds, online discount brokers and alternative equity and fixed income trading systems to develop applications that require a high-frequency data store for pre-trade analysis, market sweeping for best execution, real-time compliance, storing and analysing the entire depth-of-book, building and testing complex algorithmic trading strategies and transaction cost analysis (TCA).

According to the Patent Office's invention summary, "The invention provides a real-time financial search engine in retrieving financial information in real time. A condensation memory in the real-time financial search engine stores financial data in compacted space that allows computation of a reduced set of numbers. The result produces a sub-second response time in providing real-time financial data to institutional or individual investors."