STAC ANNOUNCES CISCO AS INNOVATION SPONSOR

Vendor supplies STAC Lab with the latest Nexus and Catalyst Series switches. STAC ANNOUNCES CISCO AS INNOVATION SPONSOR NEW YORK – October 6, 2008 - The Securities Technology Analysis Center (STAC®) today announced that Cisco has become an Innovation Sponsor for the Manhattan-based STAC Lab. Cisco is also a member of the STAC Benchmark Council. The STAC Lab is a research facility where end-user firms can try out new technologies under simulated trading conditions. It contains advanced load-generation mechanisms, precise timing equipment, market data, and test tools pre-integrated with many of the products to be tested. As an Innovation Sponsor, Cisco has provided the lab with its latest Nexus and Catalyst Series switches and will continue to supply it with the latest Cisco technologies. This helps customers and partners to design high-performance trading solutions using Cisco products and to test those solutions using official STAC Benchmarks. STAC has added the Nexus and Catalyst products to its "Racked-and-STAC'd" list, the inventory of hardware and software products with which STAC is ready to support customer projects. As a member of the STAC Benchmark Council, Cisco contributes to specifications under consideration by the Council’s participating trading firms. The Council is a group of over 40 trading firms and vendors (www.STACresearch.com/members) who are defining industry-standard ways of measuring latency, capacity, power efficiency, and other key performance attributes of solutions used in the trading process. "We are excited to have Cisco’s support for the STAC movement,” said Peter Lankford, Director of STAC. “Cisco products are used throughout financial markets firms to handle many of the most demanding workloads, and customers are eager to understand the capabilities of the latest Cisco technologies. We look forward to helping securities firms take advantage of Cisco’s products to improve trading performance." High performance infrastructure is a key asset for trading firms today, because increased performance of automated trading applications provides top-line benefits. "Our financial services customers find the STAC Benchmarks a valuable tool to evaluate high-performance trading solutions,” said Paul Jameson, director, Global Financial Services Solutions at Cisco. “By providing our Nexus and Catalyst Series switches to the STAC Lab, firms can take advantage of the latest Cisco technology to design and test low-latency, high-throughput solutions. In addition, Cisco has been working with industry leaders to create integrated solutions to help customers take advantage of market opportunities in an efficient manner. Cisco will be using the STAC facilities to qualify and benchmark the solutions, so customers can gain a competitive advantage by accessing opportunities quickly with minimized risk.”