Bloomberg Trading System

Bloomberg provides clients with a completely packaged Trading System solution that requires
minimal hardware, software and support. Firms are no longer forced to recoup hidden costs by
under sizing environments to the point of adversely affecting trading performance. Firms also
need not operate “at risk” with only a single system without provisioning for outages through
high availability or disaster recovery plans.
Since 1981, Bloomberg has provided an enterprise-grade ASP solution for Trading Systems.
Now, Bloomberg provides an Open Architecture within which firms can directly integrate. By
delivering Software as a Service (SaaS), Bloomberg enables clients to fully leverage their
systems while avoiding the hidden costs and responsibilities associated with infrastructure
build-outs, version upgrades, data sourcing, continual tuning and system maintenance.

Infrastructure

Bloomberg’s ASP model provides a complete ‘turn-key’ solution for enterprises that includes
software as well as infrastructure, maintenance and operational support as standard, whilst
other vendors typically expect clients to build, configure and maintain these components on
their own.
Hardware: Sized, scaled, and dedicated to licensed clients
Software: True enterprise-class systems tuned for performance
High Availability: Standby systems ready to assume the load without users experiencing any
downtime
Disaster Recovery: Completely separate Geographic Data Centers with real-time replication
between
Network Service Bureaus: Fully managed and monitored network connectivity to external
destinations, execution platforms, counterparties and settlement systems
Monitoring, Optimization and Tuning: Operations teams dedicated to monitoring systems as
well as continually tuning the environments for trading performance

EASE OF UPGRADES

Bloomberg also provides a certified, fully supported process to automatically upgrade clients so
that they can remain current, receive system enhancements to avoid the time and costs
normally associated with version upgrades. In contrast, other OMS vendors must certify their
releases with specific hardware/software combinations tends to drive hardware, configuration,
and implementation costs even higher when platform requirements change between software
releases. For example, other vendors typically require specific versions of operating systems,
databases, and even service packs, which in turn require very rigid hardware requirements.
Clients find themselves forced to reconfigure and swap out entire infrastructures to upgrade to
the latest version of their current OMS vendor’s platform. They then must “waterfall” these
changes and associated overhead through several environments, data centers and support
teams to remain current, to leverage new enhancements, or to address bugs in their current
systems.

In contrast, Bloomberg’s hosted Open Architecture enables clients to integrate external

systems seamlessly across their Bloomberg OMS via exposed services. Bloomberg can roll out
enhancements, changes and modifications without requiring any hardware, infrastructure, or
software changes that could disrupt the client’s environment. Firms retain consistent
integration interfaces between their external systems and Bloomberg that do not change as
modifications are made to data schema, backend systems, or evolving functionality.

THIN CLIENT AND REMOTE ACCESS

As trading landscapes continue to evolve, many firms are creating worldwide trading desks
under a “follow the-sun” operating model. For such firms, Bloomberg provides a true WAN-
enabled Thin Client that allows users to access their systems from literally any location in the
world with the peace of mind of biometric security. This Bloomberg front-end application is
highly optimized for remote access and provides clients with a consistently streamlined
experience with their trading systems for sustained agility within the markets, even when
working remotely. When compared to the Thick Clients of other systems that consume huge
amounts of memory, require the configuration of Citrix farms for deployment and are incapable
of efficiently being utilized over the wire, the
Alpha-contributing, performance-ready capabilities of Bloomberg’s Thin Client become
apparent.

FREE SUPPORT
Bloomberg’s commitment to service and support within the financial industry is unsurpassed.
While other vendors attempt to charge hundreds of dollars an hour for Trading System support
or cannot scale a support department to cope with the needs of their clients, Bloomberg is
dedicated to ensuring that clients extract the most value possible from their licensed systems.
Support is always free, unlimited, and available 24/7 for all system users, eliminating anxieties
about reducing support requests in fear of incurring charges. Users simply type ‘HELP HELP’ to
connect to a live support representative.

OPEN ARCHITECTURE
In addition to an enterprise-class ASP, Bloomberg also offers the benefits of an Open
Architecture that allows clients to integrate external applications and coordinate workflows
between systems via exposed Web services, messaging and other industry standard
methodologies. This architectural openness provides clients with a means to a phased approach
to system integration, co-mingled applications and implemented “best-of breed” environments.
Combining an Open Architecture with
SaaS provides the best of both worlds to Bloomberg clients, enabling them to extend and even
migrate their current applications via a completely hosted and managed enterprise-class
solution.

EXPERIENCE
As many OMS vendors begin to recognize the difficulties clients are experiencing in building,
maintaining, and tuning the infrastructure required for their products, they are beginning to
offer “ASP-like” solutions. However, clients must be wary of these offerings, as most vendors
have little or no experience deploying either SaaS or systems within an ASP capacity, taking
shortcuts to
provide such offerings in a cost-effective manner. For example, some vendors may choose to
contract with lowcost hosting facilities or deploy client environments within heavily virtualized
and undersized hardware to maximize the amount of margin they can secure from their
hardware. In contrast, Bloomberg has provided a true enterprise class multi-tenet ASP solution
for over 25 years to hundreds of thousands of financial service professionals around the world.
Moreover, Bloomberg owns its data centers, having optimized and scaled its systems over the
past two decades specifically for financial service workflows. The scale, magnitude and support
of Bloomberg’s technical architecture are an order of magnitude beyond what other OMS
vendors or clients could build, maintain and evolve for themselves. And it all comes as a
standard package to each Bloomberg Trading Systems customer. By delivering a completely
packaged Trading System solution that requires minimal hardware, software, and support,
Bloomberg enables clients to focus on true “Alpha” generation without worrying about the
costs or anxieties involved with an ever-changing technical landscape.