Sifting through the mountain of financial data available today is huge task and a costly and time consuming burden for many companies in need of accurate market data. Xignite (News - Alert), Inc. is a market data cloud provider working in the financial services space to help companies sift through that data and capitalize on the information they genuinely need.

Rich Tehrani, TMC (News - Alert) CEO, had the opportunity to speak to Joel York, CMO and GM of direct business for Xignite. The interview was part of TMC's On the Road series in San Jose, CA (News - Alert).

According to York, any application you build in finance lives and breathes market data, including stock market information, interest rates, currency values and a whole host of additional information. Traditionally, gaining access to that data has been very difficult with the need for data feeds through coding as well as specialized hardware and software.

“In financial services, there's this huge explosion of data going on because of algorithmic trading and to get these large amounts of data and filter it down just to what you need when you're looking at your Android (News - Alert) or iPad is a very difficult task,” said York.

Xignite makes it easy for companies to access specific data via the Internet using their cloud-based APIs. York said the company's typical customers are financial services firms building applications, which have increasingly become mobile apps. The company also services typical web applications, risk management apps and back-office and front-office apps.

York said the company services a number of different market sectors, including web publishing companies like Forbes.com. Forbes uses Xignite to publish their real-time stock data online. Corporate clients building an EOP application or something similar may also use Xignite APIs to pull in real-time currency rates and other important data.

The company has around 900 customers, said York, and operates globally. They offer approximately 50 different web service APIs covering everything from global equities to currencies to futures to options to master data. He added that their broad product offering also spans the three “flavors” of data commonly used in the financial sector. Real-time data usage is extremely popular for applications that would send data from a stock exchange to an iPad in mere seconds, for example. The company also offers APIs for reference data and historical data.

“We dramatically lower the total cost of ownership and the access because we're on a pay-as-you go model,” added York. A lower TCO as well as managing and sifting through mountains and mountains of data are the two main priorities for Xignite customers.

“It's a distraction from your core business,” said York. “If you are a trader or a hedge fund, you don't really want to spend your time and resources managing data, which is essentially a commodity from your perspective, that you need in order to do your value-added [service] like operate your hedge fund.”