This data center is also being used to operate the just launched Capital Markets Community Platform, a " ," limited to financial services firms and designed to meet their specific needs.

One need is speed. Financial services invest heavily in technology, in part, so they can act to market data.

The NYSE's community platform is design to ensure that its customers are treated fairly, and it ensures them that the maximum latency that any user will experience in this data center is 70 microseconds (one millionth of a second) round-trip for any message, O'Sullivan said.

"We guarantee that nobody will have an advantage on the network," said O'Sullivan. "It's designed to be a level playing field for trading."

With planned network improvements, the aim is to soon get that response time down to single-digit microseconds, he said.