HP Helps Alpha Trading Systems of Canada Deliver Ultra-fast Trading Platform to Meet Growing Demand


MISSISSAUGA, Ontario, - HP today announced that Alpha Trading Systems, the leading alternative trading system for Canadian equity securities, significantly increased its performance and trading capacity with an HP Converged Infrastructure. Alpha wanted to inject greater performance into its system to support rising trade volumes, a growing marketplace and continuing demand for faster market data delivery and trade execution.

In collaboration with HP, Alpha has implemented a new converged infrastructure with industry-leading HP ProLiant servers to power its unique trading platform. By significantly increasing performance over the previous infrastructure, the HP solution has enabled Alpha to cut orderentry latency to sub-millisecond levels and execute trading orders within an average of 750 microseconds, thereby increasing trading efficiency.

"With our HP Converged Infrastructure, we've achieved the fastest native execution speeds in Canada for our trading platform and are closing the gap on execution speeds in markets around the world," said Karl Ottywill, chief information officer, Alpha. "This not only puts our trading capabilities at the forefront of the Canadian marketplace, but enables us to aggressively compete at a global level."

The new technology, composed of HP ProLiant DL 380 G7 servers, delivers higher performance, and a 35 percent energy reduction. An essential building block for a Converged Infrastructure, HP ProLiant servers provide advanced management and energy efficiency, delivering up to 27 times performance per watt improvements.(1) HP ProLiant G7 servers significantly improve system operations and efficiency throughout
the server life cycle, and can pay for themselves in as little as two months.

Alpha's new infrastructure enables the organization to accommodate growth in the Canadian securities market and differentiate itself from the competition.

"With trading transactions increasing and users looking to capitalize on split-second nuances in the market, the ability to process more trading capacity quickly equals competitive advantage," said Dave Frederickson, vice president, Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking, HP Canada. "HP technology and industry expertise helped Alpha to develop a scalable, high-performance infrastructure to deliver ultra-fast trading
capabilities and rapidly respond to changing market demands."

HP Converged Infrastructure is part of an Instant-On Enterprise. In a world of continuous connectivity, the Instant-On Enterprise embeds technology in everything it does to serve customers, employees, partners and citizens with everything they need, instantly.

About HP

HP creates new possibilities for technology to have a meaningful impact on people, businesses, governments and society. The world's largest technology company, HP brings together a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure to solve customer problems. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at www.hp.com.

(1) Based on HP internal testing comparing hardware on the HP ProLiant DL380G4 to the HP ProLiant DL380G7.

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