CME Globex Migration to Google Cloud: Preparing for Your 2028 Trading Infrastructure Opportunity
The Inevitable Migration and the Innovation Mandate
The facts are clear: CME Globex is migrating its matching engines to Google Cloud Platform's specialized private regions—Chicago for production and Dallas for disaster recovery—with the full transition scheduled for completion by 2028.
For market participants, this is the single most significant infrastructure opportunity in a decade. Astute CIOs and CTOs recognize this as a chance to accelerate cloud adoption, modernize their entire trading ecosystem, and unlock previously cost- or latency-prohibitive trading strategies. This transition is poised to redefine what is possible in the cloud.
At 28Stone, we have been working in partnership with Google Cloud to verify the capabilities of the platform and recently published the “Benchmarking High-Frequency Trading on Google Cloud” whitepaper. We developed our Globex Migration Preparedness Guide to help you navigate this shift. If your firm is looking to capitalize on this seismic change, immediate planning is essential.
The New Reality of Cloud-Powered Trading Performance
Google has undertaken substantial investment and engineering innovation specifically to optimize GCP for the needs of exchanges and the financial services industry.
Key innovations tuned for ultra-low latency market workloads include:
- Ultra-low-latency and deterministic networking
- Software-Defined Multicast
- High performance and throughput compute
- Private, Customer-Controlled Regions
This specialized platform allows firms to imagine a world where you can provision a virtual machine instance next to the matching engine on demand and gain results once considered unattainable.
The Co-location Dilemma and the Critical DR Hook
For market participants currently co-located in Aurora, the migration presents a unique and complex set of decisions. Now is the time to rethink your infrastructure strategy
Custom hardware co-location (CHC) will NOT be an option in the Dallas Google Cloud region.
The Fork in the Road: Your firm faces a critical choice regarding physical proximity to the Chicago matching engine:
- Remain in Aurora and accept the additional latency introduced by the physical distance.
- Modernize and relocate hardware to the new Google Cloud Co-location (CHC).
- Move current infrastructure to U4C Bare Metal for a 1:1 shift into the cloud.
- Choose virtualization using specialized Google Cloud C3 and C4 machine types next to Globex.
The Non-Negotiable DR Strategy
While you have options for production in Chicago, the disaster recovery (DR) data center in Dallas presents a non-negotiable requirement that forces immediate cloud planning. This means that for failover purposes, every co-located trading firm will mandatorily need a plan for trading in the cloud.
Act Now: Maximize Your Opportunity
The move to the cloud is inevitable, but the rewards will be greatest for the early adopters who focus on agility and modernization. Taking advantage of cloud-native services allows your business to focus on trading strategies and investment products, rather than managing commodity infrastructure.
The move to the cloud is inevitable, but the rewards will be greatest for the early adopters who focus on agility and modernization. Taking advantage of cloud-native services allows your business to focus on trading strategies and investment products, rather than managing commodity infrastructure.
The CME Globex Preview environment is scheduled to go online in 2026. The time to start your assessment, planning, and testing is now to ensure a seamless migration and maximize your strategic advantage.
To make the right decision, you need verifiable data and a definitive strategy. Our 28Stone Globex Migration to Google Cloud Preparedness Guide is created to help develop your infrastructure modernization plan. Key topics include:
- Assessing where your firm is currently situated in the CME Globex ecosystem
- What prerequisite decision points are required
- Which action items need priority, and on what timeline
And much more. Download the 28Stone Globex Migration Preparedness Guide today to secure your firm's competitive edge in 2028 and beyond.
As a certified Google Partner for financial services, 28Stone stands ready to help you assess your options and determine the optimal path forward, be it co-location, partial migration, or a full embrace of the benefits Google Cloud has to offer.
