A2X Markets (A2X), a new, independent stock exchange, has joined Africa’s largest and only vendor neutral data centre, Teraco, to bring its fast trading platform closer to clients. In a growing trend seeing financial institutions changing to multiple-provider platforms, A2X says it’s collaboration with Teraco will enable A2X’s clients to connect and get up and running in a quick and cost-effective way.
Lex van Wyk, CEO, Teraco
Lex van Wyk, CEO, Teraco, says the company is excited to partner with A2X as it looks to compete in the South African Capital Markets space: “Internationally, stock exchange competition leads to improved responsiveness and innovation while providing more liquidity, ultimately making the cost of execution lower. It is an exciting business venture and Teraco is delighted that A2X has chosen its extensive ecosystem to grow and develop the new exchange.”
A2X competes directly with the JSE providing an alternative platform for companies to secondary list and trade shares. “We reviewed the local data centre market extensively and found Teraco to be the only true, network agnostic provider, which was critical to not only our decision, but more importantly, our value proposition. We wanted to make it easy and cost effective for our clients to connect to A2X. By hosting A2X’s primary data centre at Teraco, we are able to offer our clients an extensive list of connectivity options including the low latency option of colocating their systems with A2X,” says Neal Lawrence, CTO, A2X.
He says that Teraco is able to provide A2X and its clients with access to several leading companies via local Points of Presence (PoPs), cross connects or peering through Africa’s largest Internet Exchange (IXP), NAPAfrica: “Teraco has access to the largest carrier ecosystem as well as a 72-hour turnaround for any client wanting to connect within the ecosystem”
Van Wyk says as always, technology is an enabler and with A2X, it’s proving fundamental: “For A2X a competitive advantage comes down to being a part of the financial hub that exists in Teraco, and having a platform that provides direct connection allowing high frequency trading at super high speeds with very low latency. Brokers need to connect and trade within microseconds and, within Teraco’s ecosystem, this is entirely possible.”
In the time it took to be licensed as a stock exchange, A2X also identified that it wanted to remain focused on its core services and value proposition. “We took a decision early on that we wanted to remain focused on building and running our core business. Outsourcing the data centre function was an obvious decision, however with Teraco, we got more than just a hosted data centre solution, we also gained a valued business partner”, says Lawrence.
For more information on A2X please visit https://www.a2x.co.za/
About Teraco
Founded in 2008, Teraco Data Environments is the first provider of resilient, carrier, cloud and vendor neutral data environments in South Africa. It is also the biggest data centre in Africa. Clients benefit from the cost savings and improved resilience of securely housing their information systems and networking equipment in a colocation facility purpose-built and operated to global best practice by an expert organisation with an absolute focus on data centre technology and infrastructure. Teraco is also home to Africa’s largest Internet eXchange Point (IXP) NAPAfrica. It is one of the top 20 largest global IXPs by membership. Since its launch in 2012, it has grown to over 140 GBPS of traffic and 200 members, and is now a critical component of Africa’s Internet eco-system.