Fintech startup deployed MySQL HeatWave on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) to deliver real-time trading to retail investors—faster, cheaper, and more reliable than Amazon RDS and Redshift.
Introduction & Background
Exchange Speed was founded in 2021 as a notification service to provide access and transparency into high-value trading activity on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) and CBOE Australia (CXA).
Real-time block transactions are a primary indicator for large institutions as they compete for portfolio holdings. However, everyday investors traditionally only receive this information from news outlets, creating a delayed response which puts them at a disadvantage.
Exchange Speed aims to shift the power by providing an enterprise transaction notification service to retail investors.
Business Challenges & Goals
Exchange Speed needed a database powerful enough to process all the trading activity on the ASX in real time, in order to create rapid and accurate alerts for its subscribers, when the value of trade on a particular company reaches a certain threshold.
The company initially implemented databases from Amazon Web Services, but these did not have the processing power to handle the high volume of orders and trades coming in from its ASX data feed, resulting in dropped trades.
Achieving the required performance levels with its legacy provider necessitated heavy investment in database infrastructure, which would significantly hinder the startup’s ability to deliver its notification services at a price suitable for everyday investors.
To enhance business viability and subscriber value, the company needed to improve data processing efficiency with a robust, low-cost, reliable, scalable, and more secure database.
Business Results & Metrics
Exchange Speed boosted operational efficiency, reduced costs, and improved investor services by implementing MySQL HeatWave on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) to replace Amazon RDS and Amazon Redshift.
With a more robust database platform—Exchange Speed gained the power to seamlessly monitor all activities on the ASX and CBOE Australia, which average 1.7 million trades and 15 million orders per day. With MySQL Heatwave , the fintech startup can now inform its subscribers of all relevant stock exchange movements without missing a single trade.
Exchange Speed now executes its queries significantly faster than before. Thanks to the reduced query time, it can send message alerts to its clients in real time, enabling them to compete on the same playing field as institutional investors.
The MySQL Heatwave implementation considerably reduced Exchange Speed’s total cost of ownership, supporting its goal to provide directional trade notifications to subscribers, at the lowest price. The company would have needed to spend 5X as much with Amazon to achieve comparable levels of database performance.
Exchange Speed uses the native analytics capabilities of MySQL Heatwave to provide insights into key operational performance indicators—for example, the number of statements written to the database per second and the number of concurrent connections—enabling it to closely monitor and improve its service levels.
By deploying MySQL Heatwave on OCI, Exchange Speed has greatly enhanced its data security and ensured regulatory compliance. This was achieved by setting up a Virtual Cloud Network (VCN) and a subnet to ensure complete control over its network environment.
The company achieved a successful implementation and database migration within one week by leveraging Oracle Premier Support and MySQL Support. Oracle support teams helped Exchange Speed to set up its VCN, subnet mask, and security architecture to enable it to access the database externally.
"The MySQL team was just incredible. We had extremely competent engineers on the case whenever we needed. And we received a massive amount of support from the Oracle architects. This contrasts sharply with AWS, where after numerous support tickets and months of phone calls, we still have not been able to switch off some background security services," Grant Peace said.
The implementation of MySQL Heatwave on OCI has laid the foundation for Exchange Speed’s future success. It now has the speed and service reliability that retail investors need, as well as the scalability to meet any business demand without impacting performance.
Having a more stable database platform has enabled the startup to better market itself, attracting the attention of a tech investment fund looking to develop Exchange Speed as a mobile application. It is currently also exploring partnerships with online brokerages and trading platforms.
Why MySQL Heatwave
In their search for a suitable database cloud provider, Exchange Speed assessed various solutions from providers such as Amazon, Google, and Oracle. Their primary criterion for selection was performance. The company would also need to keep costs low and ensure a high level of support to set up, secure, and operate a highly demanding database environment.
Exchange Speed selected MySQL Heatwave because it was significantly faster than competing solutions, lower in price, and offered unparalleled support. The company then chose to run MySQL HeatWave on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) because it offered the best price-performance ratio.
"Our business model is contingent on getting very fast query times from the database to reduce our latency between the exchange and the subscriber. We chose MySQL HeatWave on OCI. Compared to Amazon RDS and Redshift, it has pretty much everything. It's faster, it's cheaper, and it's more reliable," Grant Peace commented.