Complex event processing is able to handle multiple data streams in real time.

Providers of middle-office software are incorporating complex event processing technology to manage multiple streams of data.

Headstrong, a global IT consulting firm, has integrated Sybase Event Stream Processor (ESP)–the latest release of the Sybase Aleri CEP platform—into Headstrong’s Teevra real-time trade matching and STRIDE, a trading solution for CFDs (contracts for difference).

A CFD is a derivative product that derives its share price from the underlying stock or index that it is tracking. CFDs are exactly like trading normal stocks except that instead of owning physical shares, the buyer is simply trading the difference in share price over the duration of the contract.

With Sybase ESP, Headstrong was able to accelerate the development of customer-facing financial applications that leverage high volumes of data from multiple sources in real time.

“In Teevra, which is a middle office platform, ESP is used as the core matching engine which matches and reconciles trade feeds from multiple sources,” Prakash Neelakantan, vice president at Headstrong , told Markets Media. “In the STRIDE CFD platform, the Auto Quoting engine, Price Aggregation service and the Auto hedging module are designed around ESP.”

Teevra provides “a single gateway for various financial institutions to connect to different clearing houses across asset classes using diverse formats and communication protocols,” said Neelakantan.

Headstrong needed a CEP platform that could serve as the core engine for specific functionality within Teevra and STRIDE.

“Sybase ESP’s clustering capability allows us to scale our applications and deliver a more resilient solution, which gives us the freedom to focus on the business rules that we can build on the Sybase CEP engine,” said Neelakantan.

Headstrong, which has been a Sybase System Integrator Partner since 2009, has provided value added services on a number of Sybase data management products, including Aleri CEP.

“Although a new partner, Headstrong collaborated with Sybase to successfully close the licensing of Aleri CEP as the foundation for a custom trading system that was developed by Headstrong,” Domenic Iannaccone, director of business development, financial services industry, Sybase, told Markets Media.

Headstrong further strengthened the relationship with Sybase in July 2010 by signing an OEM agreement under which Headstrong may develop and license its own product with Aleri CEP as an embedded component.

Building CEP apps on the Sybase platform reduces the time and cost to build and deploy by 80 percent on average, as compared to building the same apps from scratch in Java, Iannaccone said.

“By using Sybase ESP, the application developer focuses on the business logic, and doesn’t have to worry about the underlying data handling, performance, scalability, reliability, etc.,” he said.