Trading Reimagined is a content series that examines how the transformative power of technology is prompting a reimagining of the markets. Trading Reimagined is sponsored by Exegy.
Traders Magazine spoke with Arnaud Derasse, Chief Product Officer at Exegy, about 2023 and the outlook for 2024.
What were the most important trends for Exegy and Exegy’s customers in 2023?
Part of my responsibility as the Chief Product Officer is to engage clients in conversations about our products and get a first-hand idea of what the market will be looking for next. In 2023, firms were looking primarily for scale and were happy to partner with us as we have many technologies at our disposal to help our clients scale easily.
Recurring themes with customers are capacity, latency, and stability. As customers look to consolidate their portfolio of providers, they see our partner-style relationship as particularly attractive. The fact that we support customers at every step as they scale their tech stacks is seen as a reassuring safety net.
Customers are moving fast. They’re making changes to their tech stack due to the push for an increase in the number of markets they trade in. This means they are developing and adding to the number of products that they use and that they need good technology and good partners they can rely on to help them grow.
What surprised you in 2023?
We are fortunate to count many of the top bulge bracket banks as customers and I was surprised last year by their appetite for, and speed of, change.
I’ve spent 12 years in this market, and in a way, nothing surprises me anymore. Some challenges are the same every year. People want technological systems that can cope with more data and still be stable, without spending too much more. But what did surprise me was how much firms care about the quality of their technology and how much they are willing to invest in building a better technology stack.
Exegy had a busy 2023. Which development(s) would you highlight as especially important?
One of our big announcements last year was in August, around our next generation ticker plant and its capacity to process large amounts of data. This is a very innovative solution for the industry’s challenge around ever-increasing data volumes and volatility. By using purpose-built FPGA technology we’re helping our clients’ future-proof their systems and reduce their footprint by as much as 15-20x if you compare it to legacy, software-only solutions.
We were also able to reduce resource consumption by about 10-20x for clients by offloading FIX processing onto FPGA. We announced FIX processing with FPGA at the end of last year. This was a big advance that was long in the making and came after more than a year and a half of research. The FIX protocol has been used in financial services connectivity for a long time and it is not going away anytime soon, which is why we decided to provide an off-road, FPGA-based solution.
Lastly in 2023, we continued integrating the tech companies that joined Exegy via acquisition. Bringing companies together under one umbrella is complex and has taken a lot of focus, but now we’re emerging as one company with a range of leading software and hardware solutions that we’re excited to get in the hands of our customers.
What are Exegy customers concerned about heading into 2024?
This is aligned with what we’ve seen in the past. Customers are looking at the financial stability of their tech suppliers, ensuring they have the right partners and that they can grow with these partners. They are asking for scale, and they are asking for a roadmap for innovation, from a partner they know will be around for a long time.
So, the trend of customers focusing on scale, reliability, and performance will continue. Exegy’s been around for 15+ years, we’ve got a solid, reliable foundation. We’ll continue building trust with our customers in 2024 and we’ll continue innovating to meet new challenges. This is what the market expects from us, and this is what we will deliver.
