The new non-execution offering is hosted by OptionsCity and was built on OptionsCity's Freeway automated trading technology.

"Automated trading is more popular than ever, but it remains incredibly time-consuming and expensive to build, test and deploy new trading models," said OptionsCity CTO Victor Glava. "With Freeway Analytics, traders can focus on developing strategies that work in real-world market conditions, not on how to integrate terabytes of data."

Freeway Analytics is a hosted system that provides traders with both a powerful visualization engine and an exchange simulator, and is built on a flexible and open architecture. Upon launch, historical futures market data is being provided by Vertex Analytics, but any desired market data source can be easily integrated.

The visualization engine allows traders to see how strategies and trades will perform in different market conditions over time. The exchange simulator ensures that models take into account real-world latency and dynamic market conditions. Furthermore, Freeway Analytics' open architecture makes it simple to integrate with popular statistical analysis tools such as Matlab or R.

"Trading firms spend an inordinate amount of time and money on managing market data," said James Austin, CEO and founder of Vertex Analytics. "In fact, the inability to effectively store and maintain high frequency futures data is limiting their ability to be successful. Because Vertex's historical data is an integrated part of Freeway Analytics, OptionsCity's customers can focus on trading, not data management."