While the NYSE has yet to incorporate its data traffic into its Ethernet network - it uses the Fibre Channel devices - consolidating that traffic is a project Bach is considering now that the bandwidth is there.

Unlike many of today's large enterprises, which pride themselves on consolidating their server environments through hypervisors, has a negative side for the NYSE. Sharing compute nodes among applications increases latency, which effects trade executions.

"Virtualization costs you a penalty of a couple of microseconds. That's something I'd rather give back to the customer," Bach said. "So in the core trading applications, we don't virtualize."

Lucas Mearian covers storage, disaster recovery and business continuity, financial services infrastructure and health care IT for Computerworld. Follow Lucas on Twitter at or subscribe to . His e-mail address is .

in Computerworld's Financial Services Topic Center.