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Bloomberg is opening its market data interfaces for use by technology professionals globally, without cost or restriction, the company announced today. Bloomberg’s application programming interface, known as BLPAPI, is used daily by more than 100,000 professionals across the financial services industry and is now publicly available under a free-use license at http://open.bloomberg.com.*
BLPAPI powers global market data distribution to desktops, workgroups and enterprise applications. In addition to Bloomberg Professional service subscribers, non-Bloomberg customers, vendors and software developers can now use BLPAPI as an alternative to proprietary technologies for market data distribution. This is Bloomberg's latest move in support of its Open Market Data Initiative - an ongoing effort to embrace and promote open solutions for the financial services industry.
“Today’s global financial marketplace depends on the free flow of timely and accurate market information,” said Tom Secunda, co-founder and vice chairman of Bloomberg LP and global head of the company's Financial Products and Services Division. “By embracing open technologies for market data distribution, we remove layers of expense, erase restrictive license agreements and enable innovation.”
“We intend to evolve BLPAPI into an open standard with the help of an independent committee charged with managing the future development and stability of a truly open market data interface,” said Shawn Edwards, Chief Technology Officer of Bloomberg LP. “Open technologies allow our customers, partners, and others to direct resources towards developing innovative services instead of coping with rigid technologies.”
Bloomberg's open API follows the release of Bloomberg's Open Symbology (BSYM), a system to identify securities across all global asset classes. BSYM is an alternative to proprietary security identifiers that has been adopted by leading global securities exchanges and financial services organizations.
The BLPAPI interface works with a comprehensive set of programming languages and operating systems, including Java, C, C++, .NET, COM and Perl. Other benefits of using Bloomberg’s API include:
• A comprehensive technical definition of a market data interface that includes publish/subscribe, request/response, all built on a flexible service-oriented design,
• An MIT-style license that allows users to copy and use BLPAPI interfaces for use with any market data service, applications or adapter technology,
• A simple and intuitive interface technology that is suitable for high volume and low latency applications.
More information about the Bloomberg API is available at http://open.bloomberg.com. Subscribers to the Bloomberg Professional service may also access information about BLPAPI at {WAPI <GO>}. For technical, product or partnering questions related to BLPAPI, please contact open-tech@bloomberg.net.
* Bloomberg is offering its programming interface (BLPAPI) under a free-use agreement. This does not apply to any content.
