SAN FRANCISCO– Andrew Bach, who oversaw significant upgrades to network infrastructure for the global exchange company NYSE-Euronext, has joined Juniper Networks as chief architect of the networking vendor’s Financial Services Team.
Bach and Juniper are old friends. NYSE-Euronext, where Bach was senior vice president and global head of network services, chose Juniper switches for a 10-Gigabit Ethernet data-center network project announced in 2009. The deal, which the companies said would encompass hundreds of Juniper switches, was a major win for Juniper’s enterprise switch business, an underdog to the dominant Cisco Systems.
In his post at NYSE-Euronext, Bach was a prominent advocate of high-speed networking for the specialized needs of the financial services industry. The 10-Gigabit Ethernet upgrade increased the exchange’s network capacity from 0.5Tbps (bits per second) to 2.4Tbps and allowed a round-trip time of less than 75 microseconds for packets moving across the infrastructure.
That speed was necessary for the massive traffic generated by the financial markets, Bach said. Because stock prices go up and down quickly, buyers and sellers want their transactions to be processed as quickly as possible after they are initiated, he told the Ethernet Alliance Technology Exploration Forum last May. “Our sales cycle is one millisecond,” Bach said. Anything I can do to shave below a millisecond is a wonderful thing.”
NYSE-Euronext processes more than 22.4 billion messages per day, Bach said in August of last year, when the 10-Gigabit upgrade was rolled out. The billions of individual transactions represented $70.8 billion worth of business daily, he said. NYSE-Euronext encompasses several exchanges, including NYSE, Securities Industries Automation Corp. (SAIC), American Stock Exchange, Pacific Stock Exchange, Archipelago, NYSE Liffe and European cash markets.
Bach has also been a marquee customer for faster long-range optical networks. Last May, he said NYSE-Euronext was using 100Gbps optical connections between data centers, using Ciena technology, and would probably need Terabit Ethernet within three years. Bach worked for NYSE for just over 25 years, according to Juniper.
At Juniper, Bach will guide the sales team, “elevate the company’s thought leadership in the financial services marketplace” and help customers define architectures for cloud computing and mobile data, Juniper said in a press release. He will report to Gene Chao, vice president, global industries, strategy and solutions.
