Cloud computing comes to risk analysis

Regulatory pressures and business requirements demand that both buy-side and sell-side firms generate faster, more frequent and accurate pricing and risk analysis. At the same time, most firms need to assess trading and risk management decisions from a consistent, enterprise-wide, cross-asset perspective.

But calculating such complex risk and pricing typically requires an enormous amount of computing power; resources that many firms, particularly hedge funds, asset managers and insurance companies do not have.

To help solve this problem Numerix, a provider of pricing and risk analytics for the derivatives market, and GreenButton, a New Zealand-based cloud computing provider, have partnered to deliver buy- and sell-side clients with seamless, secure, on-demand access to cloud computing resources.

The two companies, which claim that this cloud-based service is a first, say it will provide small and mid-tier firms in particular with "push-button access to faster and more timely derivatives analytics, putting them on a par with much larger firms."

"This is a completely innovative and revolutionary solution for many because it helps to level the playing field with larger firms as they can readily access the compute power needed to produce more timely and granular analysis of their portfolios," the companies said.

Using the service, which is based on the latest release of Numerix CrossAsset XL, a flexible Microsoft Excel-based system for pricing any derivative or structured product, clients can offload their compute-intensive calculations to any cloud provider including Microsoft Windows Azure via GreenButton's interface.

"Though budgets for IT infrastructure continue to shrink on both the buy and sell-side, the pressure to arrive at the right answer faster from a trading and risk perspective has only increased," said Steve O'Hanlon, president and chief operating officer of Numerix.

"Our partnership with GreenButton is an ideal complement to our cloud enablement strategy. It combines our best-of-breed analytics with the most innovative, easy to use on-ramp to the cloud, ultimately lowering total cost of ownership, boosting productivity and empowering more granular analysis for our clients."

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