Direct Edge stock exchange launches on Windows Server, SQL Server

Wednesday (7/21) was an exciting day for customer Direct Edge. They’re a new stock exchange, and are expected to handle 10%-13% of the monthly U.S. stock trading volume, which comes to an average of 1.4 billion shares a day. You can see news article here and here.

Microsoft, and other technology partners, joined them on stage Wednesday as their CEO “rang the bell” at the open of the market.

Direct Edge datacenter is in Secaucus, New Jersey. They’re running highly clustered Windows Server 2008 environment for low latency, and improved reliability and performance. The CEO said they’ll publish latency numbers in the near future.  They’re using SQL Server 2008, including row/page compression so they can improve I/O utilization and memory utilization, and reduce storage costs. They developed their trading applications using .NET framework.

Three years ago Direct Edge was 1% of the trading volume and less than 20 employees. Now they’re a double-digit player in U.S. capital market with more than 80 employees. Their CEO said that they’re planning to grow against their competitors using better infrastructure and new technology to create better subscriber experience. It’s great to work with customers like Direct Edge. And it was a privilege to participate in Wednesday’s launch of the new stock exchange.