Cloud SIG

Time synchronization is a foundational requirement in capital markets technology, where trading systems are highly distributed across servers, data centers, and geographies. Accurate, consistent timestamps are essential for correctly sequencing market events, meeting regulatory requirements for auditability and traceability, and enabling reliable latency measurement and system diagnostics. Without precise time synchronization, firms risk compliance failures, impaired market reconstruction, and reduced confidence in the performance and integrity of their trading systems.

The STAC Cloud Special Interest Group (SIG) is a place for practitioners to hear and discuss this important topic. The SIG was formed in January of 2026 by an initial group of 5 organizations, including , proprietary trading firms, exchanges, and hedge funds. It is now open to additional members.

While the group’s mission will evolve, its initial objectives are:

1. Facilitate dialog regarding common challenges in Time synchronization technology, implementation, testing, and deployment.
2. Articulate industry requirements for Time Synchronization hardware, networks, services, and related technologies.
3. Hear from industry providers about important issues under consideration.

Meetings are currently by Zoom, and members of the SIG are free to participate in whichever activities they find valuable.

To request involvement with this SIG, please click the “Enable Me” button to the right.

Note that the Cloud SIG does not define benchmarks. So far, the benchmark specifications most commonly applied to Cloud solutions are defined by the STAC-M3 Working Group (Tick & Streaming Analytics) ., STAC-A2 Working Group (Risk computation) , STAC-A3 Working Group (Strategy backtesting) , STAC-AI Working Group (Artificial Intelligence) , STAC-ML Working Group (Machine Learning) , and STAC-N2 Working Group (Cloud Communications) .