Nasdaq Launches Eqlipse, The Fourth Generation of its Marketplace Technology Platform

Nasdaq recently launched the fourth generation of its marketplace technology platform, Nasdaq Eqlipse, the result of years of strategic investment to develop a unified and interoperable suite of solutions across trading, clearing, central securities depository (CSD), and data intelligence.

The Nasdaq Eqlipse product suite will allow Nasdaq to form even deeper strategic technology partnerships with financial market infrastructures (FMIs), which currently include more than 135 exchanges, clearing houses and CSDs around the world. It helps them modernize operations with scalable, cloud-ready technology and data solutions, addressing the challenges posed by aging legacy systems and the rapidly evolving market environment.

“Our continued investment in R&D and the recent launch of Nasdaq Eqlipse has reinforced our platform's ability to elevate tech modernization strategies across our client community,” said Magnus Haglind, Senior Vice President and Head of Products for Marketplace Technology at Nasdaq.

Nasdaq’s Investment to Modernize, Standardize, and Strengthen its Platform Capabilities

Nasdaq Eqlipse represents Nasdaq’s investments to modernize, standardize, and strengthen its platform capabilities, application architecture, APIs, and product integration across its marketplace technology portfolio.

Historically, Nasdaq offered multiple disparate matching engines, clearing and CSD solutions. In 2018, Nasdaq introduced the investment program Nasdaq Financial Framework to establish and evolve a new platform architecture tailored for trading and post-trade solutions in line with modern software principles. Rather than building an entirely new platform from scratch, Nasdaq took an evolutionary approach, introducing components of the new platform into existing products to test them in production with clients and avoid disruption.

"Over the last five years we have been consolidating and rationalizing our product offerings. Instead of having five matching engines in the market, we're focusing on offering one or two that can refine our focus on meeting the needs of our clients," said Haglind.

A Unified Solution Suite Under a Single Brand

Nasdaq Eqlipse is designed to future-proof markets, ensuring long-term sustainability and competitiveness. It features a versatile application suite leveraging a microservice architecture on a cloud-ready platform that offers optionality across cloud and on premise deployment, a modern operation and tooling framework, a standardized API suite, and end-to-end integration across all Nasdaq Eqlipse products.

The platform is also introducing an "evergreen" system for quarterly upgrades, allowing clients to keep their solutions up-to-date rather than waiting for major updates every few years.

"We're moving on from more project-based upgrades which has been the historic norm," Haglind explained. "Now with Nasdaq Eqlipse, we’re committed to making quarterly upgrades available, providing our clients with more frequent releases. This way, their solutions are up-to-date, and system upgrades become a more natural part of their operation."

Along with the fourth generation of Nasdaq's platform architecture, Nasdaq Eqlipse brings the newly introduced Nasdaq Eqlipse Intelligence, a cloud-based data, analytics and reporting platform already used in Nasdaq’s own markets, that is now being offered to its marketplace technology clients. The platform enables market operators to unlock the full potential of their data across the entire data lifecycle from ingestion and processing to refinement, access, and monetization, while providing a foundation for AI integrations.

Haglind emphasized that the broader goal extends beyond upgrading individual exchange systems to helping entire market ecosystems become more efficient and technologically advanced.

"We feel a deep responsibility to advance the evolution of market ecosystems,” Haglind said. “It’s crucial for market participants to modernize in tandem with exchanges.”

Looking Ahead

Nasdaq Eqlipse represents a significant step forward in the modernization of financial market infrastructures. By providing a unified, scalable, and intelligent platform, Nasdaq aims to help market operators manage operations, mitigate risk, and position for future growth.

Nasdaq's technology is used by 97% of global systematically important banks, half of the world's top 25 stock exchanges, 35 central banks and regulatory authorities, and more than 3,800 clients across the financial services industry.

Learn more about how Nasdaq Eqlipse is Empowering Market Operators.