CIMB moves into ASX data centre

CIMB Securities has established primary and secondary data centres in Sydney with brand new kit, as part of its split from former parent Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).

Linked gallery: Photos: Inside the ASX's custom-built data centre

The investment banking business rebranded from RBS last month, after being acquired by the Malaysian CIMB Group in March.

It operated an in-house primary data centre while part of RBS but has since established its primary environment in the Australian Securities Exchange’s Australian Liquidity Centre (ALC) in Gore Hill, north of Sydney's CBD.

Its secondary data centre is hosted by Global Switch near the Sydney CBD.

CIMB Securities’ head of technology Phil Hopper told iTnews that the business had essentially “started from scratch” in terms of technology.

He said the ALC housed “all core technology” for CIMB, including investment banking, cash equities, algorithmic trading, file servers, mail, office and back-office processing systems.

Hopper said CIMB decided to purchase brand new kit for the two facilities to meet its deadlines. It began moving into the ALC and Global Switch in July and opened its doors early last month.

CIMB also expected co-locating all IT equipment in the ALC to be the more cost-effective than its previous in-house model.

“A lot of other brokers will have a footprint in the ALC, but inherently that creates greater cost problems for them,” he said.

The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) has been positioning itself as the sole co-location provider for Australian market participants and rival exchange Chi-X since launching its $35 million ALC in February.

ASX chief executive officer Elmer Funke Kupper told investors in August that the ALC would target businesses seeking to consolidate data centre infrastructure to lower costs and network latency.

The facility was initially designed to house 100 ASX racks and 500 co-location racks but plans were scaled back last December. An ASX spokeswoman declined to disclose current occupancy figures.

As of June this year, about a third of available ALC data centre space was occupied, with 59 co-location customers accounting for a total of 76 cabinets in the facility.

Hosting contributed $4.7 million of ASX revenue in the 2011-12 financial year, with the ASX reporting a total operating revenue of $610.4 million and $339.2 million profit in the 12 months to 30 June.