Thomson Reuters Redefines Real Time

January 29, 2010

“Real time” is one of those phrases that is so easy to say but so, so difficult to deliver. Exalead has demonstrated to me a latency of 12 to 15 minutes. This means that when a change is made to the location of a package, that datum becomes available to a user of the client’s search enabled application within 12 to 15 minutes. In my experience, that’s fast. The old Excite.com (Architex) indexing system would grind for hours to update Adverworld pages. A mainstream search system labored for hours to update several million Web pages. But real time means no latency. Zero. Zip. Nada.

Thomson Reuters’ approach is explained in “Thomson Reuters Delivers Microsecond Access To News In London And Chicago.” Real time means that in Chicago and New York, certain content is available in microseconds. The write up said:

Rich Brown, Global Business Manager, Machine Readable News, Thomson Reuters, said: “Being first to act on this information can dramatically affect a firm’s profit and loss. The launch of NewsScope Direct, the market’s fastest machine readable news service, into London and Chicago reflects our commitment to delivering the market moving information our clients need at the speed required by their high performance trading strategies.”

Some questions:

Are the data numeric or text?
What is the latency for the information prior to its being received at a Thomson Reuters’ data center?
What does “microsecond” mean?
What part of the system delivers “microsecond” access?

Until I know more, I think this is a marketing and PR play to differentiate Thomson Reuters from other financial trading data vendors. I wonder if Thomson Reuters is able to beat the pants off Exegy, another outfit with speedy systems for the financial services industry?

Stephen E Arnold, January 29, 2010

A post I wrote whilst watching Tyson shiver in front of the fire. I will report his chill and my lack of compensation to the sharp eyed folks at the SEC.

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Business strategy, News, Real time search, Text processing

Comments

One Response to “Thomson Reuters Redefines Real Time”

Seth Grimes on January 29th, 2010 1:47 pm

It’s real. The system uses StreamBase for subsecond (millisecond) level event processing and it does feed off text. I wrote about it here —
http://intelligent-enterprise.informationweek.com/blog/archives/2008/09/event_processin_1.html — with links you can follow for more info.

Seth

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.