MSPmentor 100: 7ticks, Owned By Interactive Data, Gets Transparent

We’re set to unveil the fourth-annual MSPmentor 100 list during a February 16 webcast. In the meantime, MSPmentor is checking in with companies that landed on our third-annual list. Today’s profile focuses on 7ticks, now a subsidiary of Interactive Data. 7ticks is an MSP focusing on the global electronic financial market and offering an ultra-low latency trading infrastructure because “milliseconds matter,” according to the company. Scott Caudell,  7ticks co-founder and currently vice president of IT infrastructure at Interactive Data 7ticks, walked me through the latest goings on at the MSP.

First off, how’s business? “It’s been fantastic — we’re profitable as a managed services business with 7ticks and Interactive Data business as a whole,” Caudell said, adding that its acquisition by Interactive Data in January 2010 helped push 7ticks further into the financial services space.

“Acquisition has been a great thing for the business. The synergies were pretty obvious between the two organizations (7ticks and Interactive Data). We’ve expanded into both Canada and Japan this year,” he said. “We’re continuing to grow and our customers are saying they like what we’re selling. We provide a lot of value. To go out and do these exchange connections; it’s an expensive proposition.”

Caudell also noted that Interactive Data has provided a “massive customer base” and “blending” with those customers.

And what company profile would be complete without a cloud strategy update? For Interactive Data 7ticks, the cloud means “a lot of different things,” Caudill said. “Interactive Data has a lot of cloud-type services [and] software data delivery services, but Interactive Data’s cloud is “our type of cloud,” which is not an EC2-type offering but rather services focused on moving data and making customer information flexible.

Caudell also noted that the company is still hiring. “What’s next, largely, is … transparency. It’s actually been an initiative for us. Customers want and demand transparency. Whether they use it is another thing, but they want to know it’s there,” he said. “We have analytics tools, all diverse systems [that] we’re putting into what we’re calling the ‘mock portal,’ [which is] a mash-up of a bunch of other tools as a single management provisionment monitoring and data portal for the customer. That’s our biggest focus for 2011: maturing the portal for customers so they’re more in touch with their environments and operations.”

Although Caudell said the company is not well-known but “we’ve got a strong breadth of financial services. We’re always looking for a good relationship and opportunities to grow and help other businesses grow.”

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