For a national exchange or depository, technology is not an ordinary purchase. It is part of the country’s financial infrastructure. Trading, ownership records and settlement all run on it, and so does public confidence in the market.
That is why more market institutions now ask a question that used to be left to the IT department: who actually controls the systems our market depends on?
What digital sovereignty means for a market
Digital sovereignty means that a market’s critical systems and data remain under the control of the institutions responsible for that market. Decisions about where data is held, how systems operate and how they change are made by the market itself, in line with national rules, rather than by an outside party.
Hosting is the first test
The most visible part of sovereignty is where systems run. A market system should be able to run entirely within the institution’s own infrastructure, without depending on an external public cloud whose outage or policy change could interrupt trading or settlement. OTS products can be deployed in the institution’s own data centre, in a private cloud, locally hosted or as a hybrid, chosen module by module.
Data stays where the law requires
Ownership records, investor identities and transaction histories are among the most sensitive data a country holds. Data-residency rules often require them to stay within national borders. Deployment choices have to respect those rules from the start, not as an adjustment after go-live.
Control over change
Markets change: new instruments, new participants, new regulation. A sovereign market can adapt its systems to those changes on its own timetable. That is easier when products are configurable and when the institution’s own teams have worked closely with the vendor throughout the implementation, so they understand how the systems behave.
The technology should serve the market. The market should never depend on its technology provider.
How OTS works with national exchanges
We respect the digital sovereignty of every market we work with. We deliver technologies to national exchanges and market institutions, deployed within their own infrastructure and under their control, and we work alongside their teams throughout each project.
Questions worth asking any vendor
- Can the system run entirely in our own infrastructure?
- Does any production function depend on an external cloud or licensing server?
- Where will our data be stored, and who can access it?
- How do we adapt the system when our rules change?
- How closely will your team work with ours during implementation?