Redwood City, Calif. and Kansas City, Mo. - Equinix and BATS Global Markets have announced that Equinix will offer its customers connectivity to BATS' secondary data center facility in Chicago.

BATS will accept connections to all three of its U.S. secondary market centers ― its two equities exchanges, the BZX Exchange and BYX Exchange, and its equity options platform, BATS Options ― inside the Equinix Chicago data center, located at 350 E. Cermak, the location of BATS' new secondary data facility. The primary matching engines and associated trading infrastructure for these markets are hosted in BATS' primary data center in Weehawken, N.J. In addition to providing disaster recovery for all of BATS' U.S. markets, the secondary facility in Chicago provides live market data, which can be accessed via an Equinix cross-connect.

"We're excited to partner with Equinix to provide trading participants with connectivity to U.S. markets at our new secondary data center facility in Chicago, which is scheduled to be fully active in August," said Chris Isaacson, chief operating officer for BATS Global Markets. "We aim to allow our members maximum flexibility in accessing our exchanges. The Equinix data center in Chicago provides a rich ecosystem of trading participants and cutting-edge connectivity options, which will enable participants to cost-effectively cross-connect to our secondary facility in Chicago."

"Equinix is pleased to provide BATS with redundancy, security, and connectivity options inside our Colocation facilities," said John Knuff, general manager, global financial services at Equinix. "Our experience with global exchange deployments enables Equinix to anticipate and serve the unique needs of the electronic trading community, and we're excited to support BATS as it seeks to provide best-in-class performance and customer support."

Additionally, BATS is currently planning to offer a Point-of-Presence (POP) connection at Equinix's NY5 data center later this year, which will offer connectivity to BATS' primary data center in Weehawken, N.J., for all of its U.S. markets.