Financial trading software provider, Ariel Communications today announced it has been granted a £238,000 Smart award by the UK’s innovation agency, The Technology Strategy Board.

The grant will enable Ariel’s in-house team of specialist software developers to develop a Multi-Asset Trading Platform (MATP) with a unique geographically distributed trading capability in which a master trading system will control and link together any number of trading systems. Ariel envisages that this new deployment architecture and resulting trading chain will enable a totally new trading business model.

Ariel’s new platform is expected to be the first Back-to-Back-to-Back (B2B2B) capability in distributed trading. It will allow retail trading solutions to be deployed internationally; meeting local regulatory compliance requirements.  This new approach will significantly reduce deployment and installation costs without compromising the range of trading capabilities.

Commenting on the announcement Simon Cox, Ariel’s CEO said: “We are delighted to receive this grant to support our continued drive to innovate in the financial trading software market. We have an 18 year track record in the industry, providing insight, expertise and experience in this specialist arena – and will be announcing some exciting plans over the coming months in line with our new strategy. This grant from the Technology Strategy Board will enable Ariel to further push the boundaries in terms of software capabilities and trading model solutions – all developed in-house with our specialist UK team.”

This project is expected to be delivered ahead of schedule in July 2014. The Ariel R&D team will comprise eight Senior Developers with a wealth of experience in the financial trading software market. Hewlett Packard will undertake the security auditing and source code review for the full trading infrastructure for this initiative.

The Technology Strategy Board is the UK’s innovation agency.  Its goal is to accelerate economic growth by stimulating and supporting business-led innovation.  Sponsored by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), the Technology Strategy Board brings together business, research and the public sector, supporting and accelerating the development of innovative products and services to meet market needs, tackle major societal challenges and help build the future economy. For more information please visit www.innovateuk.org

Managed by the Technology Strategy Board, the Smart scheme offers funding to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to engage in R&D projects in the strategically important areas of science, engineering and technology, from which successful new products, processes and services could emerge.
 http://www.innovateuk.org/deliveringinnovation/smart.ashx

Ariel Communications Ltd has been a market leader in developing spread betting and foreign exchange software systems since 1995. Today, Ariel provides financial institutions with everything from individual software components to entire trading platforms. These are available ‘off-the-shelf’ or ‘turnkey’, stand alone or seamlessly integrated within a customer’s existing system.www.arielcommunications.com