Reaching a significant milestone in the companies’ transformational partnership, CME Group and Google Cloud announced plans to build a new private Google Cloud region, and a co-location facility, in Aurora, Illinois.

The private Google Cloud region will host Google Cloud’s new, industry-first specialized platform designed to support global trading of CME Group’s futures and options markets, and offer derivatives traders cloud-based, ultra-low-latency networking, and high-performance computing.

Locating the platform in the new private Google Cloud region in the Chicago area will allow CME Group’s clients to utilize existing connectivity options and access points to other global markets. Additionally, CME Group’s clients can choose between self-managed infrastructure in the co-location facility or Google Cloud’s specialized infrastructure-as-a-service offering, both with equal network latency to the exchange.

The new specialized platform will enable a number of benefits for CME Group’s clients, including expanded flexibility, strengthened operational efficiencies, and increased access to cloud services, and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, all of which will deepen the value proposition for market users around the globe. For example, CME Group clients will be enabled to rapidly experiment, test, and deploy new strategies without impacting their production trading environments.

“This is a significant step forward in our partnership with Google Cloud that is revolutionizing our industry,” said CME Group Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Terry Duffy. “Located within close proximity to our current data center campus, and with disaster recovery facilities in Dallas, Texas, Google Cloud’s new specialized platform will extend the benefits we can provide to our clients through next-generation cloud technology, expanded access and efficiencies, a broader range of customized connectivity options, and faster product development, with minimal disruption to their current operations.”

In addition to the capabilities offered through the new platform, market participants that migrate to the cloud can benefit from Google Cloud’s global network and innovative AI and data capabilities. With Google Cloud’s data cloud products like BigQuery and AlloyDB, and its AI and machine learning platform, Vertex AI, financial institutions will be able to experiment with new modeling techniques such as time-series forecasting and simplify access to insights with generative AI. All of this is backed by Google Cloud’s expanding number of regions, planet-scale network, and AI-powered security.

“Our latest milestone with CME Group builds on our shared goal to accelerate CME’s move to the cloud and innovate capital markets infrastructure worldwide,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO, Google Cloud. “Through our collaboration, we’re harnessing the best of cloud computing, data analytics, and AI, while respecting the existing custom hardware requirements of market participants to bring low latency, deterministic, and scalable trading environments to CME Group customers and the broader financial markets.”

Development of the specialized platform is underway, starting with key capabilities available for customer testing in the Dallas Google Cloud region, which will eventually become the disaster recovery facility. Construction of the private Google Cloud region in Aurora is scheduled to begin this year. CME Group expects to provide clients with at least 18 months advance notice before CME Group markets move to the new platform. CME Group cash markets will continue to operate in their current facilities as they do today.

Since announcing their partnership in 2021, CME Group and Google Cloud continue to execute on key initiatives, including recent enhancements to CME Group’s cloud-based data platform and migration of critical clearing applications to the cloud. Both firms are focused on delivering significant benefits to all market participants by expanding access, creating real-time, customer-centric data and analytics capabilities, bringing new products and services to market, and increasing efficiencies.

Source: CME