NEW YORK, April 13, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- BT (NYSE: BT) has today announced that its BT Radianz dedicated financial services cloud now reaches 15,000 member sites globally, consolidating its position as the world's leading managed cloud for the financial services community.

For over ten years, BT has continued to be ahead of the market through innovation, service growth and understanding of its customers' business needs in the financial sector.  As a result, its BT Radianz cloud now supports the largest secure networked financial community in the world.  This includes over 3,000 applications provided by over 400 service and content providers to users in 64 countries today.

By offering the leading cloud services to the financial community, the BT Radianz Managed Infrastructure has become a structural part of the financial industry, providing access via a single connection to the broadest range of applications and providers, rather than users having multiple infrastructures to access separate services. This approach can help deliver 50 percent savings in communications total cost of ownership to BT Radianz community members year-on-year.

The surge in member sites has been delivered through three key activities: a renewed focus on the Foreign Exchange (FX) sector; a focus on services in and to the Asia Pacific region; and helping customers respond to regulatory changes around the world.  Demand from the FX community has increased significantly over the past year, with higher volumes prompting institutions to improve access to data and trading venues.

Notably BT recognized the increased need for FX services that would result from market participants wanting to increase their activities in the Asia Pacific region, and responded by allocating significant resources to helping customers manage shifts in their business towards that region.

BT is an industry pioneer in developing the cloud community focus. During the year, we targeted and developed services with key application providers through recognizing the value that their applications bring to the wider member base.

Jose Antonio Martinez, managing director of Radianz & Payments, BT Global Services, said: "We're totally committed to satisfying the needs of the financial services industry through the provision of a world-class service and will continue to innovate and listen to the needs of our customers.

"The recent uplift in demand from FX market participants to use this service confirms our position as the preferred partner for fast and secure access to the global FX community.  Watch this space as we announce further innovative products and services this year."

Larry Tabb, CEO of leading financial markets research and advisory firm TABB Group, said: "The strength of a financial markets network is demonstrated by the number of secure endpoints and the ease of connecting exchanges, brokers, investors, and service providers. Surpassing 15,000 global member location connections is a feat demonstrating BT Radianz Managed Infrastructure's leadership in providing secure, financial markets managed connectivity."

Joseph Anastasio, director, information technology, network communications, for the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), said: "We congratulate BT on this milestone achievement.  DTCC always looks to work with service providers to bring greater efficiencies to market participants.  Through a joint agreement that the two organizations initiated a year ago, we have found BT's cloud-based infrastructure to be an extremely secure and cost-effective way to connect multiple trading applications through which we can offer our clearing and settlement services."

The BT Radianz Managed Infrastructure serves the needs of banks, brokers, investment managers, exchanges and electronic communication networks (ECNs), multilateral trading facilities (MTFs), corporate treasurers, clearing houses and securities depositories. Through a single access point, it makes available pre-trade, trade, post-trade, cross-asset and treasury applications across the breadth of a user's business needs.

Notes to Editors

Cost saving is also a key motivation of BT Radianz community members. According to a September 2009 study by Yankee Group, the shared infrastructure approach can help customers reduce total cost of ownership of network infrastructure by up to 50 percent in the first and ongoing years. Yankee concluded that although pricing and level of savings vary from firm to firm, the methodology ensures there are savings in upfront costs and ongoing operational expenses.

The BT Radianz Managed Infrastructure provides connectivity to more than 50 of the world's securities and derivatives exchanges and execution venues, and more than 60 of the world's foreign exchange single- and multi-bank trading portals.

Execution venues include electronic communication networks (ECNs), multilateral trading facilities (MTFs), and automated trading systems (ATSs). In June 2010, the BT Radianz Managed Infrastructure completed ten years of service while providing 100 per cent uptime to its member sites. It also won the Waters Award for "Best Financial Network Provider" for five years running.

The BT Radianz Managed Infrastructure is used by:

• the world’s top stock exchanges
• the world’s top broker-dealers
• the world’s top investment managers
• the world’s top hedge funds
• the world’s top fixed income securities firms.

Over three thousand applications are available from service and content providers through the BT Radianz Managed Infrastructure, spanning market data, trading, matching, clearing, settlement and treasury services, and supporting industry messaging and data standards such as the FIX (Financial Information eXchange) Protocol, ISO 20022 and FpML.

The service is consistently recognised as an industry leader by analysts, customers and peers, including winning:

• 2011: “Cloud Computing Innovation of the Year” award from Financial Sector Technology magazine.
• 2010 ‘Most Innovative Cloud Computing’ award from Financial-i magazine
• 2010: Silver place award in “Best Innovations by IT or Software Firms” from Futures and Options Worldmagazine.

FX Trading Statistics:

• The average daily value of FX trading globally is $4 trillion
• London (38 per cent) and New York (18 per cent) are the two biggest FX centres
• 58 per cent of FX trading is electronic
• Total market trading volumes have increased by over 500 per cent in total since 2005.

About DTCC

DTCC, through its subsidiaries, provides clearance, money settlement and information services for equities, corporate and municipal bonds, government and mortgage-backed securities, money market instruments and over-the-counter derivatives.

About BT

BT is one of the world’s leading providers of communications solutions and services operating in more than 170 countries.  Its principal activities include the provision of networked IT services globally; local, national and international telecommunications services to our customers for use at home, at work and on the move; broadband and internet products and services and converged fixed/mobile products and services.  BT consists principally of four lines of business: BT Global Services, Openreach, BT Retail and BT Wholesale.

In the year ended 31 March 2010, BT Group’s revenue was pounds Sterling 20,911 million.

British Telecommunications plc (BT) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT Group plc and encompasses virtually all businesses and assets of the BT Group.  BT Group plc is listed on stock exchanges in London and New York.  

For more information, visit www.bt.com/aboutbt

SOURCE BT