The rise of alpha generation platforms

Despite some well-reported fiascoes in ongoing credit crunch, quantitative hedge funds as a group are not going away. Indeed, the search for quantitatively derived alpha is as intense as ever, given the rising competition. This has given rise to what the Aite Group calls Alpha Generation Platforms, which allow for rapid development and deployments of trading apps. Let's face it, a fund has a small window to capitalize on a truly good idea. Within a matter of months, you need the technology in place to back the idea, which goes beyond mere screening of stocks. Aite looks at 4th Story; Alphacet, ClariFI, Deltix and QuantHouse. As Finance Tech notes, they tend to offer integrations with data sources and databases, easy back testing and simulation, easy model creation, visualization tools, easy integrations with other software and the like. Aite expects demand for such platforms to rise to $120 million by the end of 2011, up from $12 million at the end of 2006.  

For more:
- here's the Finance Tech article

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