Proquote

Proquote identified an opportunity to exploit the emerging connectivity provided by the internet to create a professional trading system that was not restricted to an office environment but could also be used from remote locations such as the trader's home.

Proquote approached the LANDmark team to create the new distributed trading platform. Using proven components for market data delivery and trading, the LANDmark Team extended the mainframe trading systems prevalent at the time to a client server configuration capable of operating across both local and wide area networks.

The volume of market data required to make informed trading decisions required an innovative approach. After developing a detailed mathematical model of the network traffic, the LANDmark Team overcame numerous hurdles to build the world's first distributed, real time thin client trading terminal. An automatically downloaded java application was installed locally on the workstation to process the compressed, incremental, data streams over low-bandwidth, unreliable, third party network connections.

By allowing real time interaction from any location across the web, Landmark reduced the cost of entry for the private investor and small to medium broker. Proquote marketed the capability and rapidly built a client base, penetrating the institutional investment community.

The LSE bought Proquote in 2003 and today over 30% of LSE members trade billions of pounds per annum via Landmark.

The Landmark Team continue to operate the service on behalf of Proquote and, while the terminal is now only one of several solutions offered, we continue to build Proquote's growing product range and support their customer base.