Delivering real-time market data with precision, scalability, and reliability is crucial for success in financial markets. As organisations increasingly transition to the cloud, they face challenges like latency, fairness, transparency, and unpredictable data egress costs. To explore these issues, CJC partnered with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) at WFIC2024, testing the London Stock Exchange Group’s (LSEG) Real-Time Connector (RTC) on OCI to assess cloud-based market data solutions. RTC, a next-gen delivery solution built for cloud environments, was impressive with its performance.

The testing revealed RTC’s ability to deliver real-time data with exceptional efficiency and reliability, while OCI’s advanced infrastructure provided a future-ready foundation for high-performing, seamless data distribution. Access the report here. It equips organisations to address the challenges of real-time data delivery while embracing the full potential of cloud-based market data solutions.

RTC: A Modern Solution for Real-Time Market Data

LSEG’s RTC is a modern, high-performance middleware solution for real-time market data delivery in cloud-optimised environments. The tests demonstrated RTC’s ability to handle demanding workloads, delivering low-latency, high-throughput performance even on untuned OCI infrastructure. This performance matched or exceeded bare metal and on-premises systems, positioning RTC as a credible choice for IT leaders aiming to modernise their data distribution capabilities.

Key Takeaways of Deploying RTC on OCI

• Low Latency and Scalability: RTC maintained low latency across multiple configurations, validating its ability to handle real-time applications reliably. Both RTC and OCI demonstrated the capacity to manage high-throughput, low-latency workloads.
• Performance and Clock Speed: Even with untuned OCI infrastructure, RTC achieved low-latency and high-throughput performance, comparable to or exceeding on-premises systems. Clock speed was key in achieving high performance and optimising resource usage for maximum efficiency.
• Exceeded Defined Targets: RTC exceeded performance benchmarks for message rates, maximum items processed and required bandwidth across the Micro, Small, Medium, and XLarge models – the Large model successfully met them. This confirmed its scalability and adaptability to different workloads.

OCI: The Ideal Platform for Market Data Delivery

CJC tested off-the-shelf OCI infrastructure with no additional tuning and the results were impressive. OCI delivered performance comparable to on-premises or bare metal solutions, showing its ability to support various market data systems, including RTC, Solace and Kafka. OCI’s flat, non-blocking network and elastic compute options make it adaptable to various architectures, offering IT leaders a flexible, future-proof platform for their data strategies.

Key OCI Advantages for Market Data Systems Include

• Guaranteed Network Performance: OCI’s network design ensures predictable throughput and low latency to meet financial market requirements, backed by an SLA.
• Elastic Infrastructure: Dynamic scalability handles surges in market activity without compromising performance.
• Cost Efficiency: OCI eliminates data egress fees on dedicated connections and offers predictable costs with a standardised global rate card.
• Compatibility: OCI seamlessly integrates with platforms like RTC, Solace, and Kafka, ensuring flexibility and interoperability.

Why IT Executives Should Consider RTC and OCI (and More!)

For organisations modernising their market data delivery, RTC on OCI offers a scalable, high-performance solution that integrates smoothly into cloud environments while maintaining the reliability of on-premises systems. OCI’s flexibility also supports other market data delivery platforms like Solace, allowing IT leaders to design customised architectures.

OCI's transparent and cost-effective approach to data egress is a standout advantage. Independent of the report, CJC confirmed that transferring 50-100 TB of market data through OCI can be up to 92% less expensive compared to other cloud providers.