Managed services provider XCentral is working with the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) to support finance industry clients out of the ASX’s state-of-the-art data centre. Tony Yoo headed out to the high-tech Australian Liquidity Centre to meet with the ASX’s head of sales, technical services, Adam Bradley and XCentral managing director Philip Patelis to get the full story.
[Photos: ASX's Australian Liquidity Centre]
CRN: How did the partnership between ASX and XCentral begin?
Adam Bradley: The ASX built the Australian Liquidity Centre (ALC) with the intention of providing co-location services for customers. Because we’re not in the managed service business, we partner with MSPs when customers require a richer suite of services.
When an organisation comes to us they may say, “I just need to get a cabinet”, and we’ll make one available to them. But if that client is looking for a more sophisticated – someone who can understand their IT needs, understand where their organisation is going and add some value, to actually take a cabinet from us and then provide that additional service on top – that’s where the managed service providers can step in.
We actually certify managed service providers – organisations that understand our community, understand where we’re going – so it’s not open to all. We have a range of managed service providers from large international corporations down to smaller, more domestic organisations. And it’s all driven by the customer and what they need.
Through the ASX community and networking, we found XCentral and thought they would be a very good fit for the community that we have here. They’re very niche and they’re extremely customer focused and community minded; that’s why we struck up the relationship.
Philip Patelis: We were looking at growing in the financial services space. Being a managed services provider, it made sense that we could fit in and have an offering for the ASX or ALC. We bring our customers together. There’s the same philosophy here about “community”. You want everybody to connect.
What attracted XCentral to this data centre?
Philip: The quality of the centre, the fact that it is state of the art. When you’re dealing in the financial markets, there’s no tolerance for downtime, so we’ve got to have a provider that we can trust. Clearly, this is a place that we can trust.
The ASX has the right data centre, and the fact they’re offering an equal 62-metre cable length for every cabinet and the matching engine, are key points. The ASX has the right data centre, and they made a conscious decision to create fair and equal network latency for all within the ALC; that’s a key point.
All cabinets accessing the equities market are connected with a 62-metre fibre cross connect and for the derivatives market by a 65-metre copper cross connect.
This puts all customers on a level playing field: they have the same speed accessing the matching engines.
The ALC is technology agnostic, so can you tell us what sorts of technologies and vendors that XCentral will use?
Philip: We’ve always sold ourselves as a solutions-fit company. We are Microsoft Australia’s small business Partner of the Year and definitely aligned to Microsoft but, in saying that, we find the right tool for the job. Like when we were touring the data centre downstairs, we talked about how the racks were from one vendor but the locks were from a different vendor...
Adam: We basically picked the best elements from other facilities from around the world and brought them together for this community.
Philip ...and that’s the same with us. We’re a solutions integrator, so
we look at the best players in the market and we look at how we can bring that together to deliver the right solution for the customer.
CRN: What’s the time frame you’re looking at for the project?
Philip: We’ve had discussions for a long time and we’ve had a meeting today, so we’re looking at kicking it off as soon as possible.
CRN: Do you have a date in mind?
Philip: There’s no launch date yet. Essentially, what we’re doing now is looking at the offering and we already clearly know we can co-host customers here, but we’re now going to build our own offering alongside that to offer to the market.
Adam: It’s pretty fair to say that a lot of this is customer driven, so what we’ve done is gone through the certification process. We’ve basically looked at each organisation, know that there are synergies there, and then we’ve got commercial terms in place. For the right opportunities, you can kick off that investment.
CRN: What can you tell us about ASX’s use of MSPs?
Adam: We don’t use managed service providers ourselves – the managed service providers have been introduced for our community, so we don’t have a preference over one managed service provider over another. When a customer comes to us and explains what their requirements are, that’s when we’ll make the introductions or advise them to take a look at our website, where we provide a list of the ASX-certified managed service providers and links to their websites, so customers make their own qualifications and assessments.
We’ve created an environment and then it’s up to the network and the community to build relationships and compete for the business.
We haven’t specifically gone out there and scoured Australia for hundreds of different managed services providers. This is about the financial market’s community and finding the right people and organisations you can trust, so you can go to market together. Organisations have come to us and we’ve assessed their suitability.
CRN: What were the challenges for XCentral?
Philip: There are certain check-boxes you have to tick. You can meet certain certifications and you’ve got the technical knowledge, but then the other part is the fit with the business.
CRN: Do you have any other partners that are involved in the project?
Philip: At the moment, no. Again, it’ll be a solution fit, so depending on the customer requirement of the day that’s who we’ll bring in – whether it’s hardware partners, telcos, and so on. We’ll deal with the breadth of vendors, as required.
CRN: What’s the ASX certification process for a new partner?
Adam: It’s a set of terms and conditions, a set of commercials, and a governance process – we need to make sure we’re dealing with reputable organisations, because that’s what our customers expect. We need to make sure the certified managed service providers are professional, have appropriate financial market experience and can meet the rigorous demands of those types of customers.
Obviously, we’re heavily regulated so we need to make sure there are certain levels of protection in place, like indemnities and liabilities. But we also look at, for example, XCentral’s Microsoft capabilities and their certifications so we know that they’ve got investments in people, processes and technologies that our customers are expecting.
CRN: What’s the capacity and current take up of the ALC?
Adam: The maximum capacity of the ALC is 450 cabinets, of which we now only have one-third available for customers to procure. This equates to more than 100 clients, both domestic and international firms.
We’ve been open for two-and-a-half years and there’s no rush to fill the ALC packed to the rafters. We’re very selective. With the partners we work with, we’re selective about the community and how the facility is utilised. For example, if an organisation like Europcar was to approach us and say, “I’ve got a network engineer who lives around the corner who needs 10 cabinets”, that’s not adding anything to the financial market’s community. We’re not desperately looking to try and fill space to anybody.
CRN: What kinds of organisations suit the ALC community?
Adam: You can’t do everything. We bring an element, XCentral brings an element, the telcos bring an element and the customers bring an element. It’s about having the environment where you can bring
it all together and just being mature enough to make sure you get the right organisations. The diversity is really important to us. We want a rich, strong, diverse, multilaterally connected community. We don’t want just five organisations that look the same and are doing the same thing with the same partners.
We do know we’ve got something unique here, and we talk about not just being a data centre provider. Yes, we’ve got a great physical environment, but what’s growing here, I don’t think we’re seeing anywhere else in Australia. We have something that is so specific for the financial market’s community. We want to keep adding to that; we want more content; we want more capability – because, ultimately, that helps the market.
Everybody’s under pressure, whether they’re regulatory or cost constraints. People want to reduce complexity by bringing it together, by making it available, by having that community, having those shopfronts, and making those introductions. It just lowers all of those pressures and, ultimately, makes life easier for everybody.
Philip: I think you mentioned it as a community data centre. You’re not in the data centre business, and you can see that in the way it’s laid out. When you walk in there, it doesn’t feel like it’s jam-packed rack to rack.
CRN: Did the ALC get guidance from overseas examples?
Adam: I think the answer is a bit of yes and probably a bit of no. The ASX is the world leader in operating AUD and NZD financial markets, and the leading multi-asset class derivatives exchange in the Asia Pacific. This brings a great deal of complexity, compared with many of our local and international peers, as we are responsible for trading all the way through to clearing and settlement. There are other exchanges that run co-location facilities and networks that place many restrictions on those who use them – whereas we made a conscious decision to operate open and flexible technology assets that support financial markets, at large.
So, yes, we looked at the NYSE technology’s business, the SGX and lots of exchanges, and we’ve taken the best of all of them and brought them together for the Australian financial market’s community.
We chatted about the 62–65 metre cables. It was a big decision. We sat around a table saying it’s going to cost us another $2 million to equalise the length of the cross-connects used to access the markets. And we thought about it and said, ‘We are looking to create an open, competitive playing field for customers.’ So, firstly, they have to be the same length. Secondly, from a commercial perspective, you don’t want good tables and bad tables in a restaurant; all the tables are the same. The level playing field we have created within the ALC means that you’ll succeed or fail in your business endeavours based on what you do, not on what we do.
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