Adaptive, a provider of custom trading technology solutions, has announced the development of Aeron Sequencer, a software infrastructure platform designed to enhance consistency, scalability, performance, and availability in modern trading systems.
Developing such systems demands specialized expertise, substantial investment, and extended timelines. When these requirements are not met, firms can face regulatory compliance issues and reduced competitiveness. The increasing demands of 24/7 markets further complicate these challenges, often requiring highly skilled engineers to dedicate significant time to foundational infrastructure rather than business innovation.
Sequenced architectures, which are built on a single, global sequence of events, offer an alternative to some legacy or microservice architectures that rely on an eventually consistent paradigm. This approach simplifies development, ensuring consistency and auditability, making it suitable for institutional trading systems. Aeron Sequencer is designed for broker-dealers and exchanges, providing application infrastructure to deliver complex, high-performance platforms efficiently by separating infrastructure from business functionality.
At its core, Aeron Sequencer uses a replicated state machine architecture with a globally ordered, highly available message log. It is designed to process millions of messages per second at microsecond latency, relieving development teams of the complexity involved in building and operating this foundational layer themselves. Key features under development include performance and reliability, offering automatic failover and 24/7 operation; consistency and auditability through global ordering and a persistent audit trail for compliance; and deployment flexibility supporting both cloud-native and on-premises environments with active/active and active/passive modes for 24×365 operation without downtime for releases. It also aims to boost developer productivity by isolating business logic, allowing teams to manage their domains and release on independent schedules.
Matt Barrett, CEO at Adaptive, stated that Aeron Sequencer is being developed to empower organizations such as broker-dealers and exchanges to meet current market challenges, which include intensifying risk and volatility and potential changes to global market structure. He added that the platform de-risks complex technological infrastructure projects and empowers development teams by providing quality attributes for resiliency, performance, and consistency, enabling clients to innovate and build differentiated trading solutions.
Martin Thompson, Co-creator of Aeron and Chief Architect at Adaptive, noted that Aeron Sequencer brings replicated state machine architectures to capital markets. He emphasized that it offers a comprehensive solution for independent team collaboration, streamlined testing, and ensures total ordering and auditability without the complexities of traditional distributed infrastructure. The platform is built on proven Aeron technology, which is currently used by capital markets firms.
Aeron Sequencer is in late-stage development and is intended for deployment in both cloud and on-premises environments. Adaptive, an expert in custom trading technology solutions, crafts front-office platforms for financial services firms across various asset classes. The company, which also developed Aeron, a technology for high-throughput, low-latency, and resilient trading systems, has offices in London, New York, Barcelona, Montréal, and Manila.
