On Tuesday, NASDAQ OMX Group Inc. ( NDAQ - Analyst Report ) announced the launch of an Amazon Web Services-powered cloud computing platform – FinQloud. The platform has been created to assist the financial services industry in storing and managing financial data with a view to simplifying operations and helping companies meet regulatory requirements.

Global regulators are coming up with stringent regulatory requirements and gaining access to more in-depth data in order to boost transparency. This is increasing the pressure on financial services companies since they have to manage larger volumes of data, resulting in high data management costs.

FinQloud will help financial services companies to deal with the increased compliance requirements and enable them to focus resources on revenue-generating activities by providing a comprehensive solution with features such as infrastructure data management, virtualization and hosting. Initially the platform will offer Regulatory Records Retention – a storage and retrieval tool aimed at saving cost and simplifying the fulfillment of the record retention obligations of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Rule 17a-4 – and Self Service Reporting – a tool that allows swift on-demand analysis and reporting of stored trade data.

Regulatory Records Retention is expected to be launched within the next few months. However, the users will have to comply with certain safety measures in the interest of data security and regulatory requirements. Firstly, they will have to submit certain documents to their applicable regulator to use the application. Moreover, all connections to the platform will go through a scrupulous encryption management system housed in NASDAQ data centers.

FinQloud will facilitate cost saving for the companies by preventing expensive infrastructure expenditures. Moreover, its application is not restricted to companies that handle data from NASDAQ. Rather, it can be used for managing data from any source.

The platform brings together the flexibility, safety and cost-effectiveness of Amazon Web Services’ infrastructure with the technology and advisory service providing expertise of NASDAQ. The stock exchange has a history of providing financial services to exchanges, regulators and broker-dealers who have to deal with complicated international regulations.

NASDAQ, which competes with NYSE Euronext Inc. ( NYX - Analyst Report ) , currently carries a Zacks #4 Rank, which translates into a short-term Sell rating. We maintain a long-term ‘Neutral’ recommendation on the stock.