Bloomberg announced today that clients who use Microsoft Azure can seamlessly access both real-time trading data and reference, pricing, regulatory and point in time historical datasets via a private connection in the Azure Virtual Network (VNet), allowing secure and reliable data access to power high priority apps in the cloud.

The service provides high-performance data to Bloomberg Enterprise Data customers using Azure. This includes content from B-PIPE, Bloomberg’s real-time market data feed, which offers global real-time access to comprehensive, consolidated market data with industry-leading data normalization and intelligence, including access to 50 million instruments, over 330 exchanges and 80 billion ticks a day. B-PIPE was made available via Azure in 2021 and its rollout in all regions was completed in mid-2022.

The service now also includes access to Bloomberg’s Data License content, including reference, pricing, regulatory data, corporate actions, ESG and point in time historical data for quant and investment research workflows. The content covers more than 50 million securities and 30,000 data fields delivered via Azure. These services include data to facilitate liquidity assessment and volatility analysis, as well as historical pricing information and Bloomberg's event driven feeds for news.   

With both B-PIPE and Data License content now on Azure, customers can experience seamless, simplified access to the data, avoiding the performance limitations, delays and unreliability of using a public internet connection. Using cloud technology managed by Bloomberg can also reduce the total cost of ownership for firms, as they do not need to build and maintain on-premises infrastructure. Access to this expanded data service is helping Bloomberg customers using Azure to make nimble and strategic investment decisions in the current volatile market.   

Using B-PIPE via Azure Private Link gives clients direct, high-performance access from a private cloud in any Azure data center by enabling a reliable and manageable solution between Bloomberg and customer VNets.  

"We built a data analysis platform on Azure called AI Democratization Platform to improve the quality of services we provide to our customers. With real-time data from B-PIPE, we are able to take this in-house big data analysis to another level. In addition, B-PIPE has been adopted by many financial institutions globally, and a private connection to the Azure VNet fulfills the high-level security requirements of financial institutions, which is one of the major reasons why we’ve selected B-PIPE,” said Susumu Masuda, Executive Officer, Head of Global Markets Planning at SMBC Nikko Securities Inc. “By using B-PIPE, we can continue to provide high-quality data analysis in order to offer information that meet the needs of each client in a timely manner, regardless of the uncertain outlook for the financial market."

By making Data License available on Azure, mutual customers can now read data directly from Azure Blob Storage containers. Customers can automate their workflows by enabling data-ready alerts and having them sent to an EventGrid topic hosted in their Azure subscriptions. When a new file lands in Azure, an EventGrid notification will be sent to the topic with all the metadata of the data file.  

“As investment firms continue moving towards more sophisticated analysis, AI and modeling in their strategies, they need advanced front-office applications that ingest large volumes of high- quality data,” said Tony McManus, Global Head of Bloomberg’s Enterprise Data division. “Bloomberg was first to make our data offering accessible in the Cloud in 2018 and we continue to provide our clients with the access and deep insight they need to make important investment decisions. This native connectivity with Azure further provides mutual clients with an enhanced and simplified data experience, and our managed service helps clients seamlessly transition workloads to the cloud.”  

“The cloud represents a significant opportunity for today’s financial services institutions, as they look to scale their data in a secure and compliant way,” said Karen Del Vescovo, corporate vice president of financial services at Microsoft. We look forward to the enhanced value Bloomberg’s expanded data service on Azure will bring to our joint customers, helping quickly deliver deeper, more relevant insights for their clients, while managing risk effectively.” 

B-PIPE and Data License are part of Bloomberg’s Enterprise Data business, which transforms the way customers extract value from data by providing high-quality pricing, reference and regulatory datasets, real-time market, event and news data, and liquidity analytics along with data management and distribution technologies. For more information on accessing B-PIPE, please click here and for Data License, please click here.