Microsoft has gone shopping in the UK in the last days. On the one hand has stayed with the startup Lumenisityand for another with a part, albeit small, of the London Stock Exchange: 4%, which it will buy from the Blackstone-Thomson Reuters consortium. In addition, the company has signed a ten-year collaboration agreement with said market.
Lumenisity is a British startup dedicated to the development of hollow core fiber (HCF) technologies, mainly for data centers and connection providers. The terms of the company’s purchase agreement are unknown, as is the price Redmond has paid for it. What Microsoft has explained is the plan it has for its technology. You will use it forexpand its capacity to optimize its global cloud infrastructure, and to meet the security and latency requirements of the Microsoft cloud platform and its service customers«.
HCF cables are characterized above all by combining fiber optic and coaxial cable, and they arrived in the 90s. What Lumenisity has done is to evolve them through a proprietary design with a central channel filled with air, and which is surrounded by a ring of tubes of fiber. As they point out, in these cables light can travel faster, because it does so through the air and not through the fiber. In fact, in some tests, this type of cable has achieved transfer speeds ranging from 10 Gbps to 400 Gbps.
According to the company, your purchase is only “the end of the beginning«, and they point out that the operation will allow them to achieve the full potential of their technology, and continue advancing to discover new capabilities in communication networks.
This startup was founded in 2017 as a spinoff of the Optoelectronics Research Center at the University of Southampton, in order to commercialize HCF research. It has clients such as BT, and the infrastructure company euNetworks Fiber UK is currently testing Lumenisity’s cable to serve the London Stock Exchange.
Precisely, the London Stock Exchange is the other point in the United Kingdom where Microsoft has been shopping, as we have mentioned. Microsoft now has, as part of an agreement signed with the institution, ownership of 4% of the London Securities Market Group (LSEG), an entity that in the next decade will invest at least 2.8 billion dollars in related Microsoft products with the cloud
In addition to this transaction, the signed agreement includes the use of next-generation data and analytics, as well as cloud computing products. Also a new data infrastructure for the London Stock Exchange, and analytics and modeling solutions with Microsoft Azure, Artificial Intelligence and Microsoft Teams. Thanks to the agreement, several of LSEG’s divisions will begin using various Microsoft products. In addition, Redmond’s will migrate the exchange’s data platform, as well as other key infrastructure, to its Azure cloud.
Microsoft and LSEG will also work together to develop new professional collaboration tools. LSEG has already developed a data and analytics platform called Workspace. From now on, both entities will work on the development and advancement of this product, as well as its integration with Microsoft Teams. Secondly, Scott Guthrie, Vice President of Cloud and Artificial Intelligence Group at Microsoftwill be named LSEG Non-Executive Director.
For David Schwimmer, CEO of the LSEG«This strategic agreement is a significant step on LSEG’s path to becoming the leader in data and infrastructure in financial markets, and will transform the experience for our clients.«.
As to Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsofthas pointed out that “advances in the cloud and Artificial Intelligence will radically transform the way financial institutions research, interact and transact various asset classes; as well as the way in which they adapt to changing market conditions«.
Photo: Elias Gayles
