Electronic trading support product of the year: Adaptive – Aeron®

Adaptive has been awarded Electronic trading support product of the year in the Markets Technology Awards 2024.

Adaptive builds and operates bespoke trading technology solutions across asset classes, enabling financial services firms to own their tech stacks. At the heart of Adaptive’s success lies Aeron^®, a high-performance, open-source technology that delivers low latency and resilience, and gives firms a competitive edge in the long run.

Judges said:

• “Good to see how Adaptive is responding to the changed environment.”
• “Adaptive is focused on cloud-native technology, offering a platform designed for long-term resilience.”
• “I recognise the challenges they describe around reliance on vendor solutions.”

Firms must adapt swiftly to unpredictable markets and customise offerings to meet client needs for long-term success. Reliance on vendor solutions can sometimes hinder adaptability and dilute technological differentiators. Aeron’s suite of software components for high-performance messaging, high-throughput and fault-tolerant services allows finance firms to quickly build proprietary, resilient trading systems from the ground up. 

Aeron therefore enables rapid development of customisable and accessible solutions. Eliminating concerns about standard functionalities allows firms to focus on aspects that truly differentiate their business and product offerings.

Aeron stands out as an open-source and cloud-native technology, preventing downtime and data loss in the event of technical glitches. Its suite of software components for high-performance messaging and clustering has been adopted by major financial firms, as referenced on aeron.io. Aeron allows firms to tailor their technology to client needs.

There are several features that distinguish Aeron, including its cloud tolerance, allowing capital markets firms to confidently move workloads to the cloud. It also reduces the hardware and operational costs associated with broker-based systems. The system can expand horizontally and vertically to accommodate varying demands. Aeron enables hot system upgrades and automatic failover for zero system downtime, ensuring fault tolerance of critical applications. Aeron features industry-standard security, including secure unicast, multicast and multi-destination cast streams. It employs public key authentication and OpenSSL cryptography. Finally, Aeron allows message streams to be saved at full message rate, ensuring systems can recover reliably from saved data without losing any messages.

This year, Adaptive introduced Aeron Premium, which offers additional software components, support and architectural design consulting to enhance trading system speed and performance. It is available on-premise as well as on the Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplaces, facilitating accelerated cloud-native trading system development. Aeron’s performance in the cloud was recently tested in collaboration with AWS. The results showcased exceptional speed and efficiency in handling data, proving its effectiveness in a cloud-based environment. 

Aeron’s adoption among leading capital markets firms has surged this past year, solidifying its standing as a widely chosen solution. 

To foster continued innovation and accessibility, Adaptive launched the Aeron Open-Source Community in early 2023. Aeron Community MeetUps across North America and Europe provide a platform for users and developers to share knowledge and applications, enhancing collaboration within the financial services development community.

Matt Barrett, chief executive and co-founder of Adaptive, says:

“We’re honoured to have Aeron recognised as the crucial piece of electronic trading technology that it is. Aeron is at the heart of Adaptive’s success, addressing the most pressing issues facing financial services firms today – from performance and resilience to cloud migration.

“Adaptive gives capital markets participants the ability to own their technology stacks and gain competitive edge in their own markets. When flexibility is paramount, Aeron’s suite of high‑performance messaging and fault-tolerant services acts as the platform for proprietary, resilient trading systems. By eliminating risk around complex, critical capabilities, Aeron allows firms to focus on what truly differentiates them, fostering rapid development and customisation.”

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