Hybrid cloud vs. colo frameworks
Industry roundtables and architecture notes reaffirm a hybrid model: keep deterministic, latency‑critical order routing and matching in colo/on‑prem, and run analytics/training in the cloud — while testing ‘exchange cloud’ offerings for rapid scaling. The practical decision matrix is now latency sensitivity vs. burstiness and compliance, not a blanket cloud vs. on‑prem choice. (aws.amazon.com) (expresscomputer.in)
Nasdaq moved its GEMX options exchange core to AWS following earlier MRX and NBE migrations, with GEMX handling roughly 12 billion messages per day — about 71% more than MRX. (tradersmagazine.com) Beeks’ Exchange Cloud is live inside Nasdaq’s core Carteret (NY11) data centre as an “exchange cloud” deployment intended to host exchange-proximate compute and analytics for members, with onboarding that began around February. (londonstockexchange.com) Nasdaq and AWS announced a market‑operator “blueprint” to help exchanges migrate selective capabilities to cloud while preserving physical proximity to participants via AWS Direct Connect; initial pilots targeted Johannesburg Stock Exchange, Grupo BMV and Nasdaq’s Nordic markets. (datacenterdynamics.com) AWS prescriptive guidance and product notes call out Outposts and Local Zones as hybrid options that extend cloud services to on‑site racks and metro edge sites to achieve single‑digit‑millisecond latency and meet data‑residency constraints. (docs.aws.amazon.com) Hardware acceleration and kernel‑bypass remain the deterministic layer most firms keep in colo: AMD’s Alveo UL3524 is positioned as a purpose‑built FPGA accelerator for ultra‑low‑latency electronic trading with ultra‑low‑latency transceivers and vendor partnerships for trading stacks. (ir.amd.com) User‑space networking frameworks (DPDK, AF_XDP, RDMA and vendor kernel‑bypass implementations) are documented routes to microsecond or sub‑microsecond datapaths for market‑data-to‑order loops, while vendors and gateways continue to ship FPGA‑based feed handlers and NIC‑level optimizations for colocated racks. (docs.cloud.google.com) Cloud‑hosted analytics and AI offerings are being tested as the burst/scale leg of the hybrid matrix: Nasdaq’s Eqlipse intelligence and Beeks’ Exchange Cloud aim to deliver cloud‑scale analytics to market participants, and Decimal Point Analytics launched the Rakshak AI investor‑protection platform on March 25, 2026 as a cloud‑oriented analytics example. (marketsmedia.com)
