The Chicago Board Options Exchange plans to have its CBOE Futures Exchange and C2 Options Exchange running on Bats trading architecture in the first half of next year, according to exchange officials.

The CFE should be live on the new platform on February 25, 2018, and C2 on May 20, 2018, Chris Isaacson, CIO of the CBOE, told clients during a conference call. “The migration date for the CBOE market will be announced at a later date.”

Since the CBOE announced its planned acquisition of Bats Global Trading on September 26, 2016, the exchange operator has reconfigured its business development and sales teams and consolidated its New York and London offices, said Eric Frait, vice president of business analysis at the CBOE and who also was on the conference call.

“We also recently launch our multi-asset solutions division to apply the firm’s innovation expertise to a broader array of products and services,” he added. “It will include indexing, data, and analytics as well as execution services.”

Before the CBOE begins moving clients over to the new trading architecture, it looks to launch its EdgX Options Exchange Complex Order Book on October 23, pending regulatory approval.

The new order book will include new order handling, risk management, and trade-through protections, according to Isaacson.

“We believe that this expanded functionality will be additive to our overall strong position in the US Options market,” he said. “I’m especially excited that this new functionality will form the foundation of all complex order handling by CBOE markets once migrated to Bats technologies.”

The CBOE will start certification testing for the EdgX COB on August 1 and then conduct weekend testing on September 16 and October 21.

For the CFE migration, clients can start requesting new physical and logical connections via a new web portal beginning on July 3. They then can start using the CFE certification ports to test connectivity in September and trade test symbols daily in November.

“We strongly encourage customers to use these daily testing opportunities along with the weekend tests,” said Isaacson.

The CBOE then will hold ‘dress rehearsals’ for the switchover on November 18; December 9; January 20, 2018; February 10, 2018; and February 24, 2018.

For C2 clients, they can start to order new cross-connects in August. The heartbeat certification environment will be available on November 1 and certification test can commence on December 1.

The C2 platform will remain in the Equinix NY4 facility until the switchover when the CBOE moves it to the NY5 data center. “After May 20, 2018, the CBOE will maintain a network point-of-presence in NY4 indefinitely so that existing physical connections in NY4 can be used to access the new C2 platform, albeit with a higher level of latency,” said Isaacson.

Isaacson said there were no plans to consolidate the exchange operator’s Chicago disaster recovery facilities. “Clients will be able to access any of our markets from either 400 South LaSalle or 350 East Cermak,” he added.

Isaacson also noted that once that C2 is operating on the new platform, it will not change its existing order allocation method for single-leg orders. “C2 will continue to be straight pro-rata without any market-maker or customer priority overlays,” he said. “However, the matching algorithm for complex orders will change to prioritize complex orders ahead of single-leg orders at a given price.”