Global IT infrastructure outsourcer Savvis has partnered with Thomson Reuters to jointly provide a venue-neutral hosting solution for financial trading at six Savvis data centers in the US, Europe and Asia. Trading firms will be able to install their applications on Thomson Reuters IT equipment hosted at Savvis facilities, beginning in the first quarter of next year.

"The initial deployment does see (Thomson Reuters) deploy a large chunk of their infrastructure into our six data centers," Savvis SVP and Managing Director for the US Bill Fathers said in an interview. "They'll deploy the central nervous system (of the platform)."

The offering will enable clients to gain access to a low-latency market data, analytics and data-management platform and to host their infrastructure, data feeds and applications within the data centers involved. The solution was designed to allow customers to "plug" their applications into a single architecture in order to get closer to "strategic points of liquidity."

Savvis forecasts that once Thomson Reuters trading infrastructure is deployed, other players in the electronic trading space will want to colocate their equipment in data centers that host it for low-latency interconnection with the large financial data and media firm's platform.

"Reuters is an 800-pound gorilla in the market," Fathers said. "They act as a powerful magnet for a range of other participants. Most people will want to flock to where Thomson Reuters platforms reside."

Installation of the hosting solution in six Savvis data centers in New York, Chicago, London, Frankfurt, Tokyo and Singapore in the year's fourth quarter is only the initial phase. Fathers is fully expecting Thomson Reuters to eventually expand its trading footprint in more of the provider's 28 data centers around the world.

"Our expansion plans are pretty aggressive and pretty fast."

Fathers called the deal a "gold rush" for Savvis during a time when the financial trading world and the world of data centers transform each other as they converge.

"Data centers have become the new trading pit," he said. "It used to be an open-outcry world. It (used to be) a question of how many traders you can get into that open (outcry) pit. Now it's which data center you are located in. Who can get the most market and the most buyers in their data centers globally?"

Both Thomson Reuters and Savvis are capitalizing on the demand for a one-stop solution from trading firms they have observed. Demand for an entire platform as a service has changed the colocation market, Fathers said. Most financial customers no longer want to buy colocation space where they have to deal with the complexity of dealing with multiple vendors to buy, install, run and maintain their IT infrastructure and buy connectivity.

"They want to buy space on the platform they can upload their application to. It's no longer a colo. game. You need to be able to offer them a platform."