Nasdaq Newsroom
Nasdaq and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have announced a modernization blueprint to advance capital markets operations, starting with market operators globally.
The initiative aims to help market operators around the world future-proof their technology, data infrastructure, and intelligence to enhance liquidity, facilitate capital flows, and drive innovation within their markets.
This blueprint will empower market operators to modernize at pace and in a cost-effective manner, allowing them to secure organizational focus on operational excellence, enhance competitive differentiation, and to drive innovation within their markets. This builds on Nasdaq and AWS’s partnership and shared vision of helping to modernize markets globally, with Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), Mexico's Grupo BMV, and Nasdaq’s Nordic Markets as the first marketplaces to explore collaborating around this innovative model.
"Nasdaq, AWS, and our market operator partners share a vision for modernizing markets in a controlled and still agile manner protecting the core pillars of resilience and trust," said Magnus Haglind, Senior Vice President, Market Platforms at Nasdaq. "These scaled partnerships establish blueprints for market operators to accelerate their ongoing modernization journeys in today's complex global market environment,” said Haglind.
Key Components of the Blueprint
The modernization blueprint is built on three foundational pillars: AWS infrastructure, Nasdaq Eqlipse, Nasdaq’s new generation marketplace technology platforms, and a new service deployment model designed to empower market operators to execute their modernization strategies while satisfying their regulatory obligations.
The adoption of cloud infrastructure across the capital markets has accelerated during the last few years. In response to the specific considerations regarding proximity and the impact of change in existing well established eco-systems around markets, edge compute solutions have been an important steppingstone to also bring cloud infrastructure into existing data centers operated by market operators. Part of the blueprint includes further evolving the use of cloud services for market operators by offering a new solution for market operators that addresses resilience, security, proximity and latency demands by positioning AWS services, exchange and trading participant systems in a common location.
Nasdaq Eqlipse represents the fourth generation of software innovation since the launch of Nasdaq Financial Framework and it marks Nasdaq’s commitment to modernize, standardize, and strengthen platform capabilities. Eqlipse features cloud-ready applications and globally standardized APIs with proven interoperability across the full trade lifecycle. Nasdaq’s marketplace technology platforms are already used by over 135 market infrastructure providers around the world for multi-asset trading, clearing, central securities depository, and surveillance. Nasdaq Eqlipse will also include a new solution, Nasdaq Eqlipse Intelligence, designed to unlock the full potential of market operators’ data with modern, cloud-based data management, analytics, and reporting capabilities that are specific to market operators’ workflows.
The modernization blueprint also brings together the expertise and experience of Nasdaq and AWS through a new services deployment model. This provides market operators with access to both companies’ deep capital markets expertise to help reduce operational heavy lifting.
An Innovative Partnership
Nasdaq and AWS have been partnering since 2008 to strengthen the capital market ecosystem through technological innovation. In 2021, they announced a multi-year partnership to bring next-generation infrastructure to global capital markets. The next phase of this partnership encapsulates the deep experience and expertise Nasdaq and AWS have developed over 15 years migrating both of their own highly regulated markets and their clients' venues to the cloud.
“The unique combination of Nasdaq’s market technology expertise and AWS’ advanced infrastructure will enable us to solve the industry’s most complex challenges that have traditionally hampered the growth and scalability of markets around the world. By reducing complexity, friction, and fragmentation, we are fortifying the financial system with greater connectivity and resilience, propelling a new era of economic growth and prosperity,” said Adena Friedman, Chair and Chief Executive Officer, Nasdaq.
The partnership addresses market operators' challenges with tailored solutions, including helping clients migrate their data models to cloud data centers, reducing latency while maintaining industry-leading resilience, performance, and security.
This blueprint will also help market operators accelerate their modernization based on proven designs that meet regulatory requirements.
Reducing Complexity and Unlocking Opportunity
One key objective of the expanded partnership is to reduce friction in today's capital market ecosystem. Until recently, cloud technology has been insufficient to support the increasing needs of market operators, who face extraordinary demands in maintaining reliable systems while handling immense transaction volumes.
This reality has caused increased complexity within these organizations, hindering their effectiveness. Market operators struggle to balance resilience and innovation, a challenge that grows more formidable as markets evolve. Local markets also face hurdles in attracting global capital due to their intricate systems, while traders deploy increasingly sophisticated strategies that regional markets struggle to accommodate.
A lack of standardization also prevents these regional markets from scaling and expanding their reach. Data sovereignty concerns add another layer of complexity. Addressing these friction points reduces barriers for market access, lowering costs for trading firms to join new markets. This strengthens local markets as new investments become active.
"Standardization around data and analytics will allow market participants to have easier access to important data sets around market maker and liquidity programs, market quality, and individual performance of trading firms," Haglind explained.
The new blueprint, proven through Nasdaq’s successful market modernization with AWS, drives industry standards, dynamic and sustainable operations while promoting a more resilient financial ecosystem. In the long term, the blueprint can enhance investor confidence and connect capital, previously confined locally due to technological complexity, to global investment opportunities.
"Together, we are helping market operators provide seamless connectivity for markets and investors anywhere in the world, with a blueprint for modernization and innovation, and the ability to unlock new opportunities for innovation and growth in capital markets,” said Matt Garman, CEO at AWS.
Nasdaq operates 18 marketplaces globally and serves over 135 markets worldwide. Its implementation of this modernization program alongside JSE and BMV leverages its substantial operational expertise.
"Over the years, as Nasdaq has worked to move mission-critical workloads to the cloud, we've heard from our peers in the market operator community that they want to learn from our experience," Haglind noted.
This practical experience gives partners like JSE and BMV confidence that Nasdaq understands the challenges of modernizing market infrastructures and can help them adopt new technologies like AI without disrupting client experience or reliability.
"We've spent the last few years doing this ourselves, so we're coming to our clients with a lot of experience, learnings, and credibility in modernizing exchange infrastructure," said Haglind. "And we're going to be on that journey with them, as Nasdaq Nordics implements these changes and acts as a laboratory for further innovation."
"It's about having a shared vision for collaborative innovation and implementing that together over the long term," Haglind said.
It’s the next chapter in Nasdaq's broader journey of unlocking a new era of growth in the global capital markets.
Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements:
Information set forth in this article contains forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Nasdaq cautions readers that any forward-looking information is not a guarantee of future performance and that actual results could differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking information. Forward-looking statements can be identified by words such as “will” and “can” and other words and terms of similar meaning. Such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements related to the benefits of products and services delivered in line with the modernization blueprint, application and availability of products and services in regulated environments, and Nasdaq’s partnership with AWS. Forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties or other factors beyond Nasdaq’s control. These risks and uncertainties are detailed in Nasdaq’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including its annual reports on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q which are available on Nasdaq’s investor relations website at http://ir.nasdaq.com and the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov. Nasdaq undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
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