A number of large global investment banks and hedge funds are now engaged to become early adopters of BT's leading edge technology - a key element of BT's collaboration suite for financial markets. Customer trials will commence in April this year and live deployments are then expected to begin on branch floors from July.

BT's next generation voice trading platform breaks down the barriers of physical and proprietary hardware switches by moving to an open, software-based component model, which can be distributed across a trading firm or into the cloud. This provides organisations with an enhanced level of flexibility and cost efficiency in how they deploy their trading communications.

Built on Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) technology, the next generation voice trading platform introduces a new level of agility for supporting trading operations dispersed throughout a region. The next generation architecture is highly scalable and is capable of supporting many thousands of users equipped with BT's ITS.Netrix trading turrets. It can be rolled-out across customers' trading floors with the minimum of disruption and without the need to rip-and-replace existing technology.

Larry Tabb, Founder and CEO, Tabb Group said: "As financial services firms look to solve their cost, power and space challenges while extending their infrastructure, it will be critical for these firms to examine more software- and cloud-based voice solutions."

Howard Boville, head of financial markets and MD trading systems, BT, said: "In the days of analogue equipment, the largest trading floors could need up to 200 racks of equipment - the equivalent of a basketball court. Going digital then reduced this to around 20 racks, about the size of a squash court. This move to switchless open components is the next step in the evolution of the trading communications world and can reduce the data centre space required down to just two racks, about the size of a pool tablll table - saving space, power, and CO2 emissions.

"Our next generation trading platform is a key component in our new suite of cloud based financial services solutions, which are all designed to drive the industry forward. Working hand-in-hand with our customers enables BT to deliver new innovations to fit the exacting needs of the market and help our customers to thrive in an ever changing world."