Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEx), the operator of Hong Kong's equity and derivatives markets and clearing houses, will offer hosting services, including low-latency co-location to HKEx markets, at its Next Generation Data Centre (NGDC) from 2012.
The move is in line with HKEx's three-year strategic plan, announced in March 2010, which was intended to prepare it for competition with other venues.
The hosting services business will provide 1,200 cabinets of server space at an average power allocation of 6 kilovolt-amps per cabinet. The hosting services will be available to exchange participants as well as information and technology vendors. HKEx has stated that it will provide support for telecommunications neutral connectivity from major carriers.
“HKEx is committed to investing in our information technology infrastructure as well as improving our market structure to make Hong Kong even more globally competitive as a financial centre,” said Charles Li, HKEx CEO. “The NGDC and the launch of our hosting services business are critical elements of this strategy.”
The business setup and implementation will cost approximately HK$750 million over the next three years. The exchange plans to move the primary data centre for its securities market to the NGDC in Q4 2012, three months later than originally planned, due to the addition of hosting services.
HKEx has already begun work on other plans to increase its competitiveness including upgrades to the exchange's matching engine to reduce latency to nine milliseconds, and improvements to its market data platform, which will double the number of stock page updates per second to 2,000.
Alternative venue Chi-East, the pan-Asian dark pool operated jointly by the Singapore Exchange and trading platform provider Chi-X Global, went live in Hong Kong on 11 November, 2010.