Case Study: Bloomberg — Tokyo Stock Exchange Earnings Optimization
Client Overview & Challenge
Bloomberg, a global leader in financial data and analytics, sought to eliminate a latency disadvantage in Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) earnings reporting, where competitors were consistently delivering updates faster. The mission was to analyze and optimize the full data path from the TSE API to Bloomberg clients, restoring Bloomberg’s leadership in real-time market reporting.
Discovery
Through packet captures, latency profiling, and detailed diagnostics, SoftAtBest uncovered that the data was traversing long, inefficient network routes before reaching clients. The investigation involved close coordination with Bloomberg’s internal infrastructure and network operations teams to trace every millisecond across the delivery path.
Solution
The team implemented a range of optimizations, including improved network routing and traffic prioritization, optimized TCP transmission behavior to maintain open transmission windows, and evaluation of reliable multicast delivery mechanisms such as PGM.
A major architectural innovation enabled instantaneous global availability of earnings data within the exchange’s release constraints, ensuring minimal latency and consistent delivery worldwide.
Results
The optimizations restored Bloomberg’s leadership in TSE earnings delivery, strengthening client trust—particularly among algorithmic users relying on Bloomberg’s API for real-time decision-making. Latency dropped from hundreds of milliseconds to single-digit milliseconds, representing a measurable and sustained competitive advantage.
Collaboration & Impact
The project was executed in C++ through close collaboration between SoftAtBest engineers, Bloomberg’s news team, and network specialists, ensuring a unified, low-latency data pipeline. Beyond resolving the immediate performance gap, the initiative uncovered broader network inefficiencies that informed enhancements across other real-time data systems. The outcome reaffirmed the value of rigorous engineering, disciplined execution, and trusted partnership in achieving world-class performance.