NYSE Euronext Using New Hubs to Create 'Global Community' of Traders

from www.securitiestechnologymonitor.com:

>>NYSE Euronext said it was creating a global network of as many as 40 "liquidity hubs" in data centers around the world.

The "hubs" will be located in facilities operated by data center specialists such as Savvis, Equinix and Telx, according to Stanley Young, the chief executive of NYSE Euronext’s technical services arm, NYSE Technologies.

The exchange operator and supplier of exchange technology said it did not plan to build more large data centers like those it has just opened in Mahwah, N.J., and Basildon, England. Those two facilities, which it considers to be its “anchor hubs,’’ have cost NYSE Euronext more than a half-billion dollars to build.

The new "hubs" for providing market access, market data and risk management services to banks and trading firms will be radically smaller. Each is likely to require less than 1,000 square feet of space at the start, Young said.

By contrast, the Mahwah facility, built from scratch, spans 400,000 square feet. Each of its operating "pods" are 20,000 square feet.

Expansion of each “liquidity hub” will be determined by customer demand for services, which eventually is likely to include the co-location of trading firms’ and vendors’ servers in the space.

About 20 of these hubs will be set up in the next two years, Young said, and as many as 20 more by the end of 2013.

In the first quarter of next year, liquidity hubs will be set up to serve banks, brokerages and trading firms in Frankfurt, Lisbon, Paris and Milan, Young said. Sao Paolo, Brazil, and Toronto, Canada, are coming in the second quarter. Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore are all potential second quarter startups as well.

"Each of the hubs will have their own communities attached to them, depending on what the local need is. Those local communities will link together to be a global community,’’ Young said.

There is already precedent for NYSE Euronext to use facilities managed by outside hosting services. The company, for instance, already operates an access point to its Secure Financial Transaction Infrastructure at an Equinix facility in Chicago. This site will become a liquidity hub, Young said, as will other access points in New Jersey and elsewhere.

...

The overall investment by NYSE Euronext also will be small. The initial capital investment in each “liquidity hub’’ is likely to be on the order of $50,000 to $100,000.

That puts the cost of 40 such hubs at under $4 million – compared to $250 million a copy for each of the “anchor” hubs in Mahwah and Basildon.

Savvis, Telx or Equinix already host exchange operations or backup facilities for Direct Edge and BATS Exchange, upstart rivals to NYSE Euronext. Nasdaq OMX Group operates its national market in a facility operated by Verizon, the large communications firm.

The deployment of the liquidity hubs was first reported by Dow Jones.

NYSE uses colo to spread trading footprint

from www.datacenterdynamics.com:

>>Plans to set up as many as 40 new small data centers in financial hubs

NYSE Euronext said it will set up as many as 40 small data center facilities inside colocation centers in key financial centers around the world to increase its market connections and its technology services offered to local banks and trading firms.

It will locate space in data centers run by colocation players including Equinix, Savvis and Telx Group, removing the need to build out its own facilities.

Its large data centers in Basildon in the UK and Mahwah in the US will be used as models for the smaller colo set-ups, according to NYSE. Called ‘liquidity hubs’, these centers will follow patents used for NYSE’s two main data centers, which currently house its main trading systems.

A report by Dow Jones Newswires listed Frankfurt, Tokyo, Sao Paulo and Hong Kong as locations that have been earmarked by the exchage.

...

Where NYSE already has arrangement with colo players it could look to expand, according to Young. Chicago, Singapore and Brazil were named as locations earmarked for growth.

NYSE’s data centers in Mahwah, New Jersey and Basildon, just east of London were opened this year. Their construction allowed NYSE to consolidate 1- data centers to four.

Equinix to use recycled water in Santa Clara

from www.datacenterdynamics.com:

>>An Equinix facility in the Silicon Valley will become one of the few data centers in the region that use recycled water for cooling. Recycled water is not commonplace in the data center industry because although the water itself is cheaper than potable water, the belief is that there is usually an added cost to treating it.

Jerry Collier, senior director for IBX operations for the Northwest region at Equinix, said the company’s LEED-certified SV2 data center in Santa Clara, California, would be cooled by recycled water in about one month from now. He did not expect the treatment process to be more expensive than normal because the water will come to the facility extensively pre-treated.

“It’s going to [cost] less because [of] the type of water we get … in that particular site,” he said. The quality of recycled water will be higher than normal because of a new and advanced water-treatment plant launched recently by the City of San Jose, which provides recycled water in Santa Clara, he explained.

Notes From Accuray's 2010 Shareholder Meeting

from Seeking Alpha:

>>The Annual Meeting

Accuray’s annual meeting took place in a well-known law firm in Palo Alto. Shareholders were offered orange juice, coffee, various fruits, bagels, and pastries. About 25 people attended the meeting, including founder Dr. John Adler. Prior to the meeting, Dr. Adler seemed well received by most Board members, who engaged him in friendly conversation.

Terremark Selects Interxion to Host Infinistructure® Platform

Press Release

24 November 2010 – Interxion, a leading European provider of carrier-neutral colocation data centre services, today announced that Terremark (NASDAQ:TMRK), a leading global provider of managed IT infrastructure services, has chosen to deploy its Infinistructure® platform in Interxion’s Cloud Hub Community at its Brussels data centre.

Terremark’s Infinistructure® is a utility computing platform that provides scalable virtual server deployment. Terremark selected Interxion because of the available space, power density, robust infrastructure, and superior connectivity and coverage in its Brussels facilities - all critical to delivering world-class service to Terremark’s customers. Interxion also shares the same high-quality standards as Terremark’s own data centres, making it a natural choice for the company’s expansion.

Interxion, as a carrier-neutral data centre provider, offers a wide range of connectivity solutions with access to 34 carriers and ISPs in Brussels, including major hubs like BNIX. This flexibility and coverage gives Terremark better bandwidth to meet customer requirements for speed and low-latency, while reducing cost. The Interxion Brussels data centre houses one of 13 Interxion Cloud Hubs across Europe, and provides organisations such as Terremark with an optimum environment for the cost-effective development, launch and management of successful cloud-based services.

“The decision to deploy our Infinistructure® platform in Interxion’s facility was an obvious choice,” said Kurt Glazemakers, CTO, Terremark Europe. “Interxion was able to provide plenty of available space and great power density to meet the platform’s needs. The exceptional range of connectivity options also enables us to offer our customers greater flexibility and thus great cost savings.”

“Interxion’s Cloud Hubs provide an ideal environment for organisations such as Terremark who are looking to house world-class IT infrastructure services. The latest secure, scalable infrastructure and the latest high-density power configurations and energy-efficient architecture are also all critical capabilities for leading service providers like Terremark,” said Anthony Foy, Group Managing Director, Interxion. “And with plenty of available space within the Brussels campus as well as across Europe, we offer the capacity to sustain Terremark’s growth as it continues to build out its infrastructure platform.”

DigiTimes: 30M Tablet Computers in ‘11, Not Counting iPad

from blogs.barrons.com:

>>DigiTimes’s Yenting Chen writes this morning that conversations with component makers in Taiwan indicate 20 million to 30 million tablet computers will be shipped next year, not counting Apple’s (AAPL) iPad.

This report follows on yesterday’s assertion, also by DigiTimes, that Apple’s manufacturing partner in China, Foxconn, is ramping up for vastly greater iPad production, on the order of 70 million units per year.

ISO 27001 certification

Equinix today announced it has received ISO 27001 certification for all five of its International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data centers in the UK. Awarded to companies whose business processes conform to strict international standards, the ISO 27001 accreditation validates Equinix’s commitment to protecting customers’ valuable information assets by maintaining the most stringent procedures governing security, resilience and business continuity.

Equinix Awarded ISO 27001 Certification For All UK Data Centers | Press Release | Equinix

www.equinix.com

Iconia 14-inch dual screen notebook

from www.semiaccurate.com:

>>Is dual screen notebooks the way forward? Well, maybe, but we have a long way to go before we have touch screens with a sensible tacktile feedback that enables you to type on a touch screen in the same way as you would on a keyboard. Innovation is always a good thing, but the question is how popular a product such as this will actually be. We can see its merits for web browsing and a few other applictions, but to us, the downsides of not having a physical keyboard are just too big to be willing to swap it for a second display.

from www.examiner.com:

>>“We took this insight and created a range of easy to use devices with touch technology including Smartphones, Notebooks, AIO PCs, Tablet and our latest addition, the ICONIA Touchbook: this level of commitment to touch technology is something no other PC vendor can compete with.” states Jim Wong Acer Inc. Vice President and ITGO President. “The Intel® Core™ i5 processor together with our experience with touch technology has allowed us to completely remap the user experience to create a far more natural interaction with our devices.

...

Both 14-inch displays have HD 1366x768 resolution, high-brightness Acer CineCrystal™ LED-backlit TFT LCDs and take advantage of cutting-edge technologies supporting all-point multi-touch for precise on-screen input. Protected by the ultra-thin yet durable Gorilla® Glass, the displays are scratch and fingerprint resistant, easier to clean and offer the same touch functionality.

ICONIA is designed to provide the optimal all-point multi-touch experience on a dual-display tablet. This is why Acer equipped it with a full range of intuitive and easy to use features and applications that fully exploit the countless possibilities of multi-touch technology. The starting point to launch ICONIA’s touch features and controls as well as applications is the Acer Ring.

The Acer Ring appears simply by placing five fingers on the screen and making a grab gesture. The Acer Ring allows you to start touch applications by scrolling through the App cards and tapping on the one you choose. The Ring also provides fast access to: Virtual Keyboard, Gesture Editor, Window Manager, and Device Control Console.

The Virtual Keyboard can be launched from the Acer Ring or by placing both palms on the bottom display. The intelligent design senses the position of the user’s palms and launches the keyboard. It comes with a full-size QWERTY layout with international language support to give users the same experience of a traditional physical keyboard and features predictive text input for natural-speed typing while avoiding mistakes. The Virtual Keyboard also includes a touchpad and a numeric keypad and can be easily switched to handwriting mode. With all these functionalities you won’t miss the traditional physical keyboard!

With the Gesture Editor you can set customized gestures to launch specific applications, open websites, view your desktop or lock your computer. The Gesture Editor offers you a simple and intuitive way to personalize ICONIA to best suit your needs.

Atmel CEO Discusses Q3 2010 Results

from Seeking Alpha:

>>Regarding our touch microcontroller products, our leading touchscreen solution, maXTouch, achieved very strong revenue growth during Q3, primarily driven by our four largest smartphone customers. In addition, we continue to add new smartphone customers for maXTouch such as Pantech for their IZAR, VEGA, and EASE products.

maXTouch design activity continues to be very strong and we expect it will positively impact production shipments in 2011. As we had expected, we are beginning to see the capacitive touch sensing market rapidly expand beyond smartphones into new applications such as tablets, netbooks, cameras, printers, automotive and other areas.

Q4 marks the beginning of tablets using maXTouch technology. Samsung, one of Atmel's marquee smartphone customers, is expected to begin shipments of their recently announced GALAXY Tab, the first of Samsung's mobile tablet devices.

We are also seeing volume ramps in other new applications, such as cameras, including the Nikon's COOLPix S80 camera and to customers such as Lexmark for touch based printers, as well as the addition of a broad range of industrial applications.

...

And during our Q2 earnings call, we stated that we expected maXTouch revenues to exceed $100 million for calendar year 2010. We are revising this guidance. Due to the extraordinary success of our smartphone customers and a continued rapid adoption of maXTouch into new high volume customers and applications, we now expect maXTouch revenues for 2010 will exceed $140 million. With this success, we believe that maXTouch will have established Atmel as the leader in touchscreen solutions.

...

With maXTouch, we have established a leading position in what is generally regarded as one of the fastest growing markets in the entire semiconductor industry. We expect Q4 to be a solid finish to what has been a remarkable year for Atmel.

...

Steven Eliscu – UBS

Yes, thank you. First question is – well, first of all, congratulations. First question is on maXTouch and the average selling prices you have been able to command. You have talked about being able to charge $2 to $3 per device. The older generation QTouch, I understand that that's below $1 and you've talked about tablets being an ASP of somewhere over $10. How do we think about where blended ASPs go going forward, just given the competitiveness in this market and just giving us some confidence that the maXTouch ASPs over the next 12 months don't – because of competition, don't become more like QTouch ASPs?

Steve Laub

Well, I think – this is Steve. With respect to QTouch versus maXTouch, they're completely different solutions. So I think to do the comparison there is not relevant and is not indicative of what's happening in the marketplace. I think the best understanding, this is a design-in product, it's not a product that you sell obviously through purchasing. It's a very sophisticated, highly integrated product.

People do pay for performance and pay for the features that maXTouch brings to them. I think the best confidence I can give you is that we released the product and opened it for new designs with customers back in the second quarter of 2009 with pricing that we set at that time and the pricing changes since that time have been relatively minimal and new designs we are winning today are not a significantly different in price, at least at the single device levels that they were back then.

So we actually have pretty good confidence that certainly over the next year that customers will continue to pay for the outstanding performance and feature set that maXTouch brings them. And so while the marketplace is competitive and it's increasingly competitive, we don't expect that you are going to see any type of substantial degradation in that market at least over the time frame that we can observe.

With respect to mix between the smart phone market and the tablet market, tablet market is just right now at the very beginning.

...

Hans Mosesmann – Raymond James

Congratulations, guys. Just a question on the new goal of the $140 million, which is dramatically higher than the $100 million you had before. What happened in that one quarter period that suddenly you have 40% increasing that target? Are you getting wins with maXTouch that were formerly wins at some of your competition? What's driving that?

Steve Laub

A lot of it is that we are seeing a lot of our existing customers being more successful than I think we certainly had anticipated and perhaps they had earlier anticipated. And I would say at the same time, we are seeing new projects, new programs being introduced at a much more rapid clip than I think – than we had planned for and others.

So, we are impressed with the execution of our partners, the success that our partners are having being our customers, and that's really what's accounting for it.

...

Steve Laub

I think clearly, the customers that have used us, many customers that have used us initially in their smart phones, I think we are in a very strong position that they will use us also in their tablets. We are also finding that a number of people who did not initially choose us in their smart phones are choosing us for their tablet. So, we feel very good about that, as well as we are also seeing the people used us for designs in tablets were people who have historically not been in the smart phone marketplace.

...

Rajvi Gill – Needham

Thank you for taking my questions and congrats again on excellence results. Just looking at maXTouch going into 2011, what do you think is probably the biggest driver of continued maXTouch growth, whether it be incremental tablet wins or new design wins from additional handset OEMs? Maybe you can provide some color in terms of where you see the growth qualitatively for maXTouch going into '11 or looking at '11?

Steve Laub

Well, I think with any sort of new market, and frankly touch is still in early stages of a rapidly growing large market, but it is relatively new. It's hard to sort of speculate as to exactly how big it's going to be. Clearly what's going to be influencing and it's going to be how successful our customers do, our ability to displace and to win designs at new customers that aren’t using us today in smart phones, as well as the adoption – (inaudible) tablets, the adoption of tablets, as well as the newer applications.

We do expect that – clearly, smart phones has been the major driver of capacitive touch. This is to be followed by tablets, we believe and the 2011 will be more of a story about tablets. But we think also you are going to see a lot of new applications, whether it be cameras as we are seeing now, whether it be printers, automotive or other industrial applications, we do think that these will also continue to expand pretty substantially during 2011.

So, there is numerous opportunities to go after in this marketplace and many of which can influence how big the return will be for Atmel with respect to that.

Equinix: Barclays Prefers To Savvis; No Bubble Here

from blogs.barrons.com:

>>

Barclays Capital analyst James Ratcliffe wants you to know that between the two, Equinix (EQIX) is the better data center stock than Savvis (SVVS), as he starts coverage of the two today with an Overweight rating on Equinix and an Equal Weight rating on Savvis.

Both companies should benefit from rising Internet traffic and corporate outsourcing of data center operations, with minimal pricing pressure.

...

The key risk is supply glut, writes Ratcliffe, and “we do not believe that the space is in any way moving toward a similar environment” to what happened in the late ’90s, he argues. “Investment is more conservative, the industry is more consolidated, customers are real and unlikely to disappear overnight, and hosting is now critical not just to ‘online’ businesses, but also to the operations side of businesses with minimal actual online activities.”

Ratcliffe has a $100 price target on Equinix shares, and $30 for Savvis.

Lung Cancer Awareness Month

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http://www.gtrnews.com/greater-tulsa-reporter/8378/lung-cancer-awareness-month-is-a-conversation-starter

Equinix (EQIX_) initiated at Barclays with Overweight

from www.thestreet.com:

>>Equinix initiated at Barclays with an Overweight rating and $100 price target. Growth in underlying internet traffic and increasing enterprise willingness to outsource hosting functions will continue to support shares, Barclays said.

Fixnetix offers co-location to SIX Swiss Exchange

from Automated Trader :

>>Fixnetix has announced that it is now providing @Source proximity services for trading firms wishing to access the SIX Swiss Exchange. Fixnetix @Source offering based at the Equinix ZH4 datacentre represents the closest available access point to the SIX Swiss matching engine.

...

Chris Landis, Managing Director and Head of Operations at SIX Swiss Exchange, commented: "Fixnetix provides ultra low latency market data and connectivity options for our customers. By moving into our new proximity site Fixnetix will now be able to even better serve our customers and deliver superb latency for data dissemination and for transaction routing. We are very excited about the response, our new proximity offerings have triggered in the financial services community."

Windows VPS Hosting by Myhosting.com Guarantees Uptime

Press Release:

>>Myhosting.com guarantees uptime with its 100 percent Service Level Agreement (SLA). All equipment is housed in a state-of-the-art Equinix Data Center in Toronto, Canada, where all web servers are connected to a top of the line fiber optic network, ensuring superior performance levels.

CIO Coaches Kids To Success

from Forbes:

>>Behind a mask of code and data is a big heart, when it comes to Brian Lillie, CIO of Equinix. Yes, he is passionate about data centers, but he’s even more passionate about coaching, whether it’s in the office, or on the field, court, or diamond.

In the video below, Lillie and Equinix CSO Peter Ferris talk about the importance of the CIO in sales.

Join the Equinix debate with the FOA, Turquoise, Deutsche Boerse, Liffe, Interactive Data and Contango Market, and explore what’s next for derivatives

from Automated Trader:

>>Join the Equinix debate on 23 November with the FOA, Turquoise, Deutsche Boerse, Liffe, Interactive Data and Contango Market, and explore what’s next for derivatives

With the recent proliferation of announcements regarding derivatives trading, which has included the news that the LSE's multilateral trading facility Turquoise will begin trading pan-European equity derivatives in the second quarter of next year; Equinix are hosting a panel of leading industry experts to explore what's next for derivatives trading.

Joining Equinix will be the FOA, Turquoise, Deutsche Boerse, Liffe, Interactive Data, and Contango Market. The panel will debate the latest developments in derivatives trading and future trends, covering subjects such as:

* What affect regulatory changes will have on market structure for OTC derivatives?
* Are exchanges preparing for the move of current OTC derivatives on to their platforms?
* How will the proposed move to clear OTC derivatives affect technology in the front office?
* What technology changes will be required to support the evolving derivatives trade process from trading through to clearing?

If you would like to join the debate, please click here to register.

Colocation: fundamentals still strong

On November 11th, Equinix (EQIX) held its analyst day in New York, highlighting its initiatives for long term growth, and in an attempt to regain investors' confidence after the revenue warning of Q3.

During the meeting, several macro trends of the data center sector were touched, which are certainly worth being resumed for our blog readers. In this article, we will also include some slides prepared by Equinix to support its presentation to investors, as they help visualize some interesting trends.

Among the key business drivers supporting strong demand for data center services, Equinix underlined mobile traffic (due to double every year through 2014), video (due to represent 90 percent of consumer traffic in the longer term), and cloud computing, which is forecasted to triple revenues by 2014 (data mainly from Cisco Research).

Gartner Research, in its “Hyperdigitization Creates Major Opportunity for IT Service Providers” forecasts that the digital sector will represent roughly 25% of GDP by 2020, and in the same time frame IDC sees the digital universe growing 44 times.

This massive forecasted increase in network traffic, reflecting people's need to use, share and distribute information, data, applications and content, both for business and leisure, represents the major driver for the need of additional infrastructure in the Telecom sector, and data centers, in general, will enjoy their share of growth going forward, too.

Despite increasing supply of new data center space, both in the wholesale and retail market, industry research shows that demand may still outpace supply, at least in the close future (data from Tier 1 Research and TeleGeography).

While a few data differ among research companies, there is a general agreements that growth should still be a two digit number going forward, and Equinix itself is estimating its target market (retail customers with strong interconnection needs) to be growing 12 to 14 percent until 2013.

Using Equinix as a bellwether for the whole sector, it also seems that Europe and Asia will outpace USA in growth in the next few years (both markets having historically been “behind” the US market in this specific sector).

Asia, in particular, is the fastest growing economy in the world, due to represent one third of the world's GDP by 2015, and the data center sector will also benefit from local Governments' push to make the area a leading digital market, and from the increase in data security regulations, also directing, in some cases, to the request to “keep data” locally.