Pico Strengthens its Global Data Center Presence with New Taiwan Colocation Facility
Pico Quantitative Trading LLC
4 min read
Pico to interconnect all financial markets in APAC, through its connectivity presence and on-net offering
NEW YORK, Aug. 13, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pico, a leading provider of technology services for the financial markets community, today announced a new managed colocation facility at Chunghwa Telecom’s CHT Taipei IDC in Banqiao, New Taipei City. Pico is providing its own local Intellihands service in CHT Taipei IDC as well as for the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) data center. Connectivity to TWSE, Taiwan Futures Exchange (TAIFEX), and the Taipei Exchange (TPEx) will be offered in the future to clients hosting in CHT Taipei IDC.
In March 2020, 24-hour continuous trading on Taiwan’s stock market came into effect, replacing the call auction trading method. Pico responded by introducing the new Taiwan colocation facility that will support firms to achieve agile, efficient and rapid access to Taiwan’s markets. Located within 100 meters of the TWSE / TAIFEX data center, the facility ensures the shortest, lowest-latency connections to the trading engines.
Coinciding with 24-hour continuous trading, TAIFEX introduced a real-time market data feed, which distributes bids, offers and traded prices on occurrence, allowing market participants to discover real-time pricing and strengthen their ability to deploy global trading strategies that involve trading between Taiwan’s futures and cash markets. Pico plans to offer dedicated or shared infrastructure options as well as hosting services, tailored technology solutions based on its global market data services, far-reaching latency-sensitive connectivity, and comprehensive infrastructure procurement. On-site Intellihands multilingual teams will provide 24/7 global support.
“The combined forces of greater availability of continuous trading, richer data feeds and efforts to enhance trading efficiency and meet international standards, is enticing many trading participants to include Taiwan markets in their global trading strategies,” said Roland Hamann, Pico Managing Director. “The Taiwan facility strengthens our capabilities to offer clients rapid access to Asia and builds on our globally comprehensive presence in all financial service data centers, and marketplaces.”
Pico has connected the location to PicoNet™, its private low-latency proprietary network mesh providing seamless global access to trading venues, outbound internet connectivity, and market data services around the world. It is supported by Pico’s analytics and monitoring platform, Corvil Analytics, the de-facto standard for analytics and visibility in the financial markets community.
Designed to host mission-critical systems, CHT Taipei IDC is the only data center in Taiwan to achieve both the ANSI/TIA-942 Facility Rated 3 Certification and the Uptime M&O Stamp of Approval. It is also certified Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), Service Organization Controls (SOC) reports, etc. and received the 2019 Taiwan IDC Provider of the Year from Frost & Sullivan. In terms of hardware features, Chunghwa Telecom IDC’s server room infrastructure is enabled with comprehensive protections against floods and earthquakes to prevent disruptions to network services in the case of such natural disasters.
“Pico is at the forefront of creating and managing technology infrastructure for financial markets businesses and we are pleased to welcome them to ourBanqiaocolocation facility,” said Chung Shuo Lin, Managing Director at Data Communications Business Group of Chunghwa Telecom. “Pico’s ability to attract global liquidity into Taiwan and, connect the Taiwan financial community to the rest of the world, makes them a valuable ecosystem partner in this strategically significant location.”
CHT Taipei IDC is connected to PicoNetTM and Pico’s Global Backbone providing for connectivity to CHT from other data center locations on PicoNetTM in APAC as well as in Europe and Americas. Pico already has the largest data center footprint in the industry, operating and maintaining colocated infrastructure in more than 40 data centers throughout the global financial ecosystem. Its live APAC data centers span Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea, that all connect to at least two of its Connectivity Hubs located in Hong Kong, Tokyo and Singapore. The firm is looking to complete its APAC build in 2021, with the addition of Australia, China, India, Malaysia and the Philippines to its global footprint.
About Pico
Pico is a leading provider of technology services for the financial markets community. Pico provides a best-in-class portfolio of innovative, transparent, low-latency markets solutions coupled with an agile and expert service delivery model. Instant access to financial markets is provided via PicoNet™, a globally comprehensive network platform instrumented natively with Corvil analytics and telemetry. Clients choose Pico when they want the freedom to move fast and create an operational edge in the fast-paced world of financial markets.
Chunghwa Telecom (TAIEX: 2412,NYSE: CHT) is Taiwan's largest integrated telecommunications services company that provides fixed-line, mobile, broadband, and internet services. The Company also provides information and communication technology services to corporate customers with its big data, information security, cloud computing and IDC capabilities, and is expanding its business into innovative technology services such as IoT, AI, etc. In recent years, Chunghwa has been actively involved in corporate social responsibility and has won domestic and international awards and recognition. www.cht.com.tw.
