NSE plans to triple colocation rack capacity to 4,000 at Mumbai HQ in 3 years

The National Stock Exchange (NSE) plans to expand its colocation data centre at its headquarter in Mumbai for trading members with an almost three-fold increase in number of racks to over 4,000 within the next three years, sources said on Wednesday.

The expansion will be carried out at the NSE's existing building at Exchange Plaza, Bandra Kurla.

The decision is based on member feedback and aimed at enhancing ease of operations and increasing the availability of racks for trading members.

Currently, NSE offers 1,400 racks to members, and the planned expansion will boost this capacity to over 4,000 racks within the next three years.

Further expansions will be made available as per additional requirements, they added.

Co-location facility allows stock brokers to place their servers at a stock exchange in consideration of a fee, giving them access to price data a fraction of second before other participants.

NSE, which is the largest stock exchange globally in terms of orders and trades per day, often handles more than 50 per cent of the total orders and trades across all global exchanges.

To support this growth, NSE is increasing its capacity to handle order messages from 5 million per second to 20 million per second across asset classes. The exchange will further scale this capacity to meet future traffic demands, the sources said.

NSE's decision would help the exchange in staying ahead in terms of technology and infrastructure, ensuring seamless trading experiences for its members.

Earlier this month, Sebi dismissed regulatory violations charges against the NSE and its seven former employees, including Chitra Ramkrishna and Ravi Narain in nearly a decade-old co-location facility case citing absence of sufficient evidence.

The matter pertained to alleged lapses at the exchange's co-location facility. Before that, Sebi had passed the order in the matter in April 2019.