London Stock Exchange Opens Data Centers to Non-Traders

By David Gross

The London Stock Exchange recently announced that telecom providers and vendors can now buy co-lo cabinets within its data centers.  This will allow market data providers, and others selling services to traders, access to the facility.

The LSE Group's Exchange Hosting service was launched last year to provide traders running algos extremely low latency access to the exchange's matching engines.   The NYSE offers a similar service to traders in its recently opened Mahwah, NJ data center.   However, unlike that facility and Equinix's NY4 Secaucus, NJ building, which is a very popular co-lo spot for U.S. traders, the LSE data center is located right in Central London.

Slough, which sits just on the other side of the M25 from Heathrow Airport, is the U.K.'s suburban data center equivalent to Northern New Jersey for financial traders.   Equinix (EQIX) has been working with Intel and trading firm Quanthouse to bring British traders into its LD4 facility in Slough.   To some extent, this Equinix Financial Exchange out by Heathrow competes with the LSE center, which could have pressured the stock exchange to open its data center to a greater base of participants.

In addition to the LSE, Interxion offers a Central London data center for algorithmic and low-latency traders.  Unlike Manhattan buildings such as 60 Hudson and 111 8th Avenue, these are not big carrier hotels, but traditional co-location facilities.   So the battle between Central London and Slough will be interesting to watch, especially with Equinix making such a large bet on its suburban facility.