The growing speed and complexity of today’s financial markets are placing all but the most technologically well-resourced participants at a strategic disadvantage. Buy- and sell-side firms, the execution venues they use, and the wide range of post-trade, market data and other service providers whose offerings they consume, are all struggling to keep up with the pace of change throughout the lifecycle of the financial transaction.

Everywhere in this lifecycle, technology is giving those willing to invest in it a competitive edge. In the pre-trade area, the growth of high frequency trading has emphasised the need for low-latency connectivity for both market and order data. Firms of all sizes are making use of collocation and proximity hosting services, in order to ensure their execution engines are as close as physically possible to the execution venues they trade on. Those wishing to compete on speed will fail unless they make the required investment in technology; for them, being second is not an option.

BittWare was in the news recently with its FPGA network boards being adopted by Fixnetix for its trading and pre-trade risk offering. As well as providing hardware, BittWare's also has tools to speed up FPGA development, helping to overcome a much-cited drawback of adopting them. Low-Latency.com talked to the company's vice president of technology Ron Huizen to find out more.