Cloud is becoming the standard for mission-critical deployments across capital markets. This includes both market operators who have leveraged the technology to build more resilient and efficient markets, as well as market participants across the sell and buy sides who gain automation and optimization through cloud deployments.

In a new development that builds on momentum in cloud adoption and market modernization, Nasdaq is expanding its partnership with AWS by enabling Nasdaq Calypso clients to host the platform on AWS’ secure, scalable cloud technology with underlying technology fully managed by Nasdaq.

This latest collaboration delivers Nasdaq Calypso users optionality, standardization and self-determination in their migration journey, empowering them to utilize managed services through a cloud-native operating model. As cloud strategy evolves, firms are increasingly looking for efficient infrastructure on-ramps to operational excellence, scalability, agility and AI innovation.

Market participants are at an inflection point with cloud adoption. Change is accelerating, placing rapid new demands on operations and technology estates. Financial institutions need ways to solve the complexity—not add to it.

The challenge is that, over time, firms have constructed complex infrastructures layered atop legacy technology and point solutions, often reliant on manual processing. The bespoke and aging nature translates to siloed, fragmented environments where banks, broker-dealers, asset managers, pension funds and other participants lack data transparency, interoperability, standardization and automated workflows.

Now, a number of trends are exacerbating this challenge and the reliance on legacy tech:

• Regulatory reforms: Basel regime, T+1 settlement, Uncleared Margin Rules (UMR), Digital Operational and Resilience Act (DORA), and U.S. Treasury and repo clearing mandates are driving the need for more automated and resilient infrastructures.
• Data volume growth: The explosion of data and multi-asset portfolios requires scalable, secure and cost-effective data management. Risk, treasury and back-office users increasingly need greater access to intraday risk metrics, margin calculation, pre-trade analytics and data.
• Technology innovation: AI, advanced analytics, blockchain and tokenization enhance efficiency while unlocking new asset class opportunities. Cloud infrastructure is critical to creating the data management foundation necessary for intelligence, automation and digital assets.

Besides these overarching themes, geopolitical tensions, macro uncertainty and market volatility compound the technology stack challenge. Legacy systems typically require manual intervention, are expensive to maintain and can create operational risk and tech debt. They also limit the ability to scale or innovate, underscoring the cloud imperative facing market participants.
 

Cloud deployments require not only technical expertise but also organizational talent and investment. These areas may fall outside of the core competencies of funds, managers and other institutions who must hire top technologist talent and retain them, all while upskilling other staff. Sustaining this approach also requires extensive culture-building and investment when budgets are already stressed by legacy cost strains. 
 

Managed services can help close that skills and resource gap, offering capital markets firms a way to augment their increasingly sophisticated digital ecosystems. By reducing the need for in-house expert talent to run applications, manage upgrades and harness innovation, financial institutions can optimize now while building future-proofed capacity to manage the next strategic change or regulation to come.
 

Nasdaq’s expansion of its AWS partnership will help deliver financial firms this strategic optionality, reinforcing our commitment to cloud-native, mission-critical infrastructure for capital markets. 
 

Cloud-enabled managed services from Nasdaq Calypso and AWS empower market participants to accelerate modernization. Beside the advertised core benefits of cloud technology (e.g., scale, automation, flexibility), CapCloud users can also take advantage of:

• Accelerated time-to-value: Shorten the time from decision to response and stay agile to launch new products or meet new mandates. Streamline through unified operations, ready-made integrations and clear bottlenecks with testing-as-a-service.
• Resilience and readiness: Operate with confidence, knowing the Nasdaq Calypso platform is built for resilience, auditability and compliance, backed by SLAs, recovery postures and standards, as well as Nasdaq’s own experience running AWS-hosted environment for its own markets.
• Capital efficiency: Lower the disruptive costs to change and shift resources from intensive, one-off projects to strategic priorities and gain improved forecasting and accountability.
• Continuous access to innovation: Adopt and operationalize emerging technologies—AI, digital assets, tokenization and real-time analytics—securely, at speed and at scale with access to 200+ AWS services.
   

Most importantly, Nasdaq Calypso on AWS gives both existing and new client the keys to their continued, self-paced migration journeys. Deployment on AWS is modular and client-led, with firms retaining control over cloud infrastructure choices while gaining access to managed services and innovation when they want and to the degree they choose.

Nasdaq Calypso on AWS is designed to help make this pathway as smooth as possible by offering seamless integration with existing architectures and workflows, supporting hybrid and co-existence models. Firms can layer in cloud capabilities and managed services through phased onboarding and with the help of Nasdaq and AWS-informed best practices, deployment playbooks and continuity planning.

With modernization on their terms, market participants can more easily initiate, test and manage the change required to keep pace in dynamic operating conditions, plugging into services and innovation as they need.

The partnership between Nasdaq and AWS represents a significant step forward for capital markets. By leveraging AWS's extensive services and Nasdaq's expertise, financial institutions can lead client-paced migrations minimizing disruption and maximizing value.

Learn more about Nasdaq Calypso and CapCloud today.

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