The Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) has launched its colo center, located on the JSE premises and will provide clients with the lowest-latency connectivity for trading and the receipt of real-time data.

Clients will benefit from a roundtrip latency of 150μs compared to the existing 2550μs for clients in Sandton.

The stock exchange said demand for colocation has come from its members, clients, data vendors, managed service providers and shared infrastructure providers both locally and internationally- with most demand coming from UK-based businesses.

JSE said to accommodate the colocation capacity requirements, the existing equity market trading solutions, powered by Millennium IT software, has been upgraded and the whole market will benefit from an improved matching engine speed of around 100μs.

JSE’s director of equity market Leanne Parsons said clients are demanding fast execution speeds and exchanges need to offer these in order to compete.

“Aside from faster trading speeds and updates to market data which will allow for enhanced response to market movements and deployment of new trading strategies, colocation also reduces the cost of bandwidth for clients,” Parsons said.