Activ Financial, a global provider of fully managed low-latency enterprise market data solutions, today announced that it has made further advancements to its world-class ActivFeed to address growing client demands for reduced footprint, lower latency and added feed functionality.
ActivFeed 1.5, through its efficient book delivery, adjustments to feed handler input and transmitter settings, has reduced bandwidth requirements by over a third. "Complementing our progress in reducing bandwidth usage, which in essence reduces our clients' total cost of ownership, we can now state that the ActivFeed latencies are physics plus a few milliseconds for data to be delivered around the world," said Mike Dunne, CTO of ACTIV Financial. In addition to these bandwidth and latency advancements, ActivFeed has also added functionality through increased field use and has developed "One Center" redundancy for further cost savings.
Detailed benefits include:
• Reduced bandwidth usage - New features include upgraded book handling and efficient book delivery. Rather than deliver changes to each level in the record ("update only" protocol), ActivFeed now has a much more bandwidth-efficient "insert, update, delete" protocol. This results in bandwidth that is roughly one quarter of what a BBO-10 feed previously required.
• Enhanced updating processes - Feed handler input settings and ActivFeed transmitter settings can be changed and re-read without restarting the system. This allows changes to be made to ActivFeed without disruption of workflow, which lowers operational cost, reduces risk and speeds up change implementation.
• More comprehensive record information - Fields can now be sent with deletes, and more information can be transferred to the client when a record is deleted. This allows clients to include information about why the order was deleted e.g. in this case 'fill' or 'cancel.'
• Lower latency - By supporting variable size datagrams, simultaneous use of multiple compression algorithms and explicit time-based flush, the latency on ActivFeed can now be set much lower without significant impact on bandwidth.
• "One Center" redundancy - Clients can now take A and B feeds from one site (e.g. both from NYC or both from Chicago) rather than having a line to each.
"ActivFeed has been a market-leading consolidated feed since its inception in 2004, and our latest version further emphasizes our focus on providing a latency and cost-efficient product." said Frank Piasecki, President of ACTIV Financial. "We are confident that the latest incarnation of ActivFeed will deliver the speed, efficiency and comprehensive sets of data necessary for firms to keep pace in an increasingly competitive marketplace, while still keeping costs and footprint down."