NASDAQ OMX Launches FinQloud Powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS)

FinQloud is a platform for financial services applications that provides efficient management and storage of financial data that helps market participants streamline operations and meet regulatory compliance requirements without making costly capital expenditures for their underlying infrastructure. The platform combines AWS’s secure, flexible, and cost-effective cloud infrastructure with NASDAQ OMX’s experience in providing technology and advisory services to exchanges, regulators and broker-dealers that operate within a complex global regulatory framework. FinQloud may be used by a variety of financial services firms managing data not only from NASDAQ OMX but also from any number of sources.

Financial services firms are faced with new compliance requirements which aim to increase transparency by providing regulators with access to more granular data around financial activities. In turn, the volumes of data and cost of data management for firms are increasing. FinQloud provides customers with a secure, "industry-only" cloud platform for financial services applications designed to immediately reduce technology burdens, aid in compliance and refocus resources on revenue driving operations. These economic benefits are made possible because of the scalability of a fully managed cloud solution that includes infrastructure data management, virtualization and hosting.

As part of the initial launch, NASDAQ OMX plans to offer two solutions: Regulatory Records Retention (R3) and Self Service Reporting (SSR). R3 will provide broker-dealers with a storage and retrieval tool to help meet U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Rule 17a-4 record retention obligations at substantially reduced cost and complexity. SSR will enable broker-dealers to perform fast, on-demand analysis and reporting on their stored trade data. Both R3 and SSR will be hosted on FinQloud and tailored specifically for members of the financial services industry. R3 is expected to be available in the coming months. To meet the stringent operational and regulatory security requirements of the financial services industry and to protect data integrity, all connections to FinQloud will be required to pass through a rigorous encryption key management system, scheduled to be available in the coming months. The encryption key management system will be housed in private NASDAQ OMX data centers before directly connecting to AWS. A client’s use of FinQloud’s patent pending R3 application will be subject to submission of required documentation to their applicable regulator.

Eric Noll, Executive Vice President of Transaction Services U.S. and U.K. at NASDAQ OMX, said; "Working with AWS, the leader in cloud technology, demonstrates our commitment to provide innovative solutions to the financial services industry at large. FinQloud, as a protected warehouse for regulated data, fosters efficient and reliable markets for investors. We will continue to work with AWS on cloud technology offerings that foster transparency and improve the quality of our markets."

Andy Jassy, Senior Vice President of Amazon Web Services, said; "Financial services customers have unique regulatory requirements for many of their IT projects, and high expectations for operational performance. With the strong reliability, low cost, unmatched platform capabilities, and agility that AWS provides, NASDAQ OMX’s FinQloud offerings, R3 and SSR, are tailor-made for AWS and cloud computing. Storing and retrieving data can be done quickly, easily, and inexpensively. And with the scalability, cost-effectiveness, and flexibility of the cloud, customers can quickly conduct analysis and reporting regardless of the amount of data. With FinQloud, we’re pleased that NASDAQ OMX will be able to combine their expertise in financial markets and regulatory compliance with the enterprise-class capabilities of the AWS Cloud."