ASX Limited, which operates the Australian Securities Exchange, is rolling out a data analytics platform to give its customers “access to data science and machine learning capabilities”.
Despite being busy with its blockchain-inspired replacement for CHESS, for the last 18 months the operator of the Australian Securities Exchange has been building the platform which ASX CEO Dominic Stevens said today was “going live as we speak”.
“The investment here will enable ASX to create analytics solutions for its customers. It will support access to data science and machine learning capabilities, and offer a broad range of ASX and non-ASX datasets. The initiative will allow those who contribute data and analytics, to create in fact their own new revenue streams,” Stevens said in the company’s half year results presentation this morning.
The firm has been working on a “broad range of capabilities” to support the offering, including a technical platform “with access to machine learning tools, a range of data science languages, and a broad range of datasets”.
The expectation is the platform will support an “ecosystem of data contributors and product developers”.
“The market can not only use ASX data and use the tools we’ve put on that platform but they can bring their own data and analytics,” Stevens added.
“The new data analytics offering will allow ASX and our customers to access more data and apply leading data science and machine learning technologies to solve complex problems,” he said.
The capability is initially being applied to a “number of internal use cases” before it is made available to select customers in a few months’ time. ASX hopes to make money from the platform in the first half of the next financial year, and expects the user base to “build slowly into the coming years”
“We’re excited about the possibilities of this initiative,” Stevens said.
ASX said it was making solid progress with other core technology initiatives; including replacing CHESS with to distributed ledger technology and upgrading its secondary data centre.
The cost of these projects saw operating expenses increase 9.4 per cent year-on-year to $105.2 million in the first half of the year, while capital expenditure of $27.6 million was more than double the investment during the same period in 2018.
The outlay was as per guidance, and the results would serve the firm for years to come Stevens said.
“We’re upgrading or replacing [systems] with contemporary infrastructure to allow ASX and its customers to take advantage of opportunities for the decade ahead. Importantly these are once in a generation projects, but they’re still part of the normal long term renewal across all of our technology,” he said.