I'm sorry if you felt offended somehow as that was not my intent. My role is only to approve the budget and I'd of course like a clearer understanding of things rather than writing a blank check for the responsible parties in my group.
Good one . Though if your latency request refers to what I'd call internal latency then the options MRBRETTONWOODS gave you should help get you started to make a choice. Their execution latencies should be competitive within that tier at least. I agree with his assessment of QuantHouse though I don't know if they've made changes in the past 1.5 years.
Right, I'm probably considering ORC for now. Not really keen on B-PIPE for a feed but I'll see how things go as I make a few phone calls tomorrow.
I've spoken to QH recently, their QuantFactory product is now positioned as backtesting oriented solution only. They even refer their clients to third-party EMSs. Internal Execution latency hasn't been improved in the slightest (still in the millisecond range, interpreted languages like Matlab/Python connected to QuickFIX can do around 8-9 milliseconds anyway), and most of the core functionality of the product, in general, including the backtesting side hasn't received much improvement except for some incremental updates. They're definitely data-focused, and simply offer QF as a side-product. RTS is already connected to Activ. You just need to pay for the feed.
Now that really narrows down on my choices. As mentioned, we don't need a backtesting and development environment. MATLAB/Python support is not really a plus but that rant I'll reserve for another thread. I'll try ORC/RTS + Activ, will see what I'm offered when I call them up.
QH's QF is in C# BTW. Another one that you might want to look at is 'Object Trading', they simply offer an API (including FIX) for both market data and execution directly interfaced to a variety of exchanges. They also have some limited risk management solutions and they also have co-location. Although, I believe they are positioned more at the high-end. Ullink is another one, although for data, they're using IDC's consolidated feed (not recommended).
not offended at all... i dont get offended by anything anyone says on this forum, nor do I get offended so easily in real life... i just find it amazing that technologist, or even management, would make a determination as to a technology without even bothering to understand it or even research it properly.. but to each its own... and if you are in charge of the budget only, shouldn't you trust those providing you with tech rather than undermine them with solutions and/or suggestions from a forum? that is how shops lose valuable resources and waste time, when a manager or someone who approves the expenses within a budget has no knowledge and starts researching to "know" and make sure his/her team is on point... I've dealt with it before, and all those implementations fail because the person with the powers fails to partner with their designers.. or worse yet, never made sure the requirements were proper and created requirements from a solution perspective (backwards)...
That's also what I recall. Not sure what their target market is as anyone with low-ish latency requirements and appropriate setups has the capacities to do that themselves. It's not that hard and intensive a project. I would never want to rely on a 3rd party product for that part of the business. That being said, I have no direct personal experience with the product so it may be fantastic.
I'm not dense-headed. If a proposition works well, I can say "OK great I'll call them up" and chip in a few lines if I have additional information for the mutual benefit of the person who made the proposition. If it doesn't work well, I'm not going to spend 100 lines elaborating why it doesn't just to show that I've taken your suggestion seriously and assessed its features. I play a sufficient part in the software development to understand the end requirements, but it doesn't require a specialized developer to see these: 1. Embium doesn't integrate well with any of our existing infrastructure: We don't need a cloud-based historical data solution; we're not a .NET shop; we're not going to rewrite our existing libraries to work with them; we have our own execution hardware; we don't have clearing relations with any of their partners and don't intend to. (Although we've been considering Newedge recently.) 2. The description of the agent-based market simulation with 10,000 iterations per second suggests that this firm does not really have the level of sophistication we're seeking to outsource a crucial part of our infrastructure to. 3. I was unimpressed by the claim of processing "1 year of data under a minute" as that doesn't really say anything (1 year of OTM Albanian yak options?), and it's not something I'd advertise unless I'm really grasping for straws.
This explains a lot (about the "competitors") ( Anyway, who hires someone taking loop quantum gravity seriously ? )