Saxo Bank will use Fix8Pro© as part of a new high performance market connectivity engine. Chief Technology Officer Michel Andre said, “Fix8Pro offered us a lightweight turnkey fix engine as a component that we could integrate easily into our framework and solution.”

“Fix8Pro has allowed us quicker time to market while retaining flexibility and execution speed close to a home built solution but without the sacrifices involved in more heavy handed frameworks. Fix8 Market Tech’s combined service, domain knowledge and technology expertise has been valued through the process and has been key for us.”

Fix8 Market Tech, founded in 2013 by David Dight, also offers Fix8 - a free, open-source framework that developers can use to build FIX applications using any FIX version, utilizing built-in testing and performance-enhancing features. Dight said that Fix8 gave market participants a FIX ‘sandbox’ to make FIX application development simpler, richer and more functional.

“We operate in the spirit of FIX which is a free, open-source language that anyone can use,” he said. “Fix8 Market Tech provides high performance value-add FIX products. It’s also our consulting arm where we apply our many years of FIX experience to specific implementations. Fix8Pro is the ‘secret sauce’ with self-generating code, and intelligent capabilities that push decision-making down the FIX layer for smarter FIX connections that reduce latency and also streamline reporting back into the firm and out to the client.”

Fix8 has offices in Sydney and Moscow, with regional support in the US. The Fix8 solution is best suited to enterprises that want to retain control of their FIX interfaces in-house, but don’t want to build from scratch. “It’s potentially useful for larger sell-side and buy-side as well as exchanges, regulators, market data providers and other non-participants,” Dight said. “Fix8Pro mitigates vendor risk and provides a nice middle ground - you get the fast, fancy tech but customized to your in-house architecture and with expert external support and documentation.”

Dight’s 30 year FIX career has encompassed roles in NASDAQ, OMX, Deutsche Bank and Computershare. He founded Fix8 Market Tech to exploit a gap in the FIX vendor market - a market that has become, according to Dight, “pricey and lacking innovation”.

“Arguably, tech and coding capabilities have outstripped what was previously available in the FIX implementation world,” he said. “At Fix8 Market Tech, we apply cutting edge coding to FIX, creating something new that fits very nicely into the global world of FIX.”