Case Study: Large Proprietary Trading Firm achieves 5x faster backtesting with DataDirect Networks (DDN)

Large Proprietary Trading Firm Successfully Navigates Risks and Delivers Business Value

PropAlgo, a large proprietary trading firm specializing in algorithmic strategies, depended on exhaustive backtesting of market and real‑time data to develop competitive trading models. Its legacy NFS/NAS enterprise storage created severe I/O bottlenecks and long runtimes for mission‑critical backtesting, market‑data analytics and strategy development; alternative solutions delivered only marginal gains and were costly to scale.

PropAlgo rebuilt a data‑centric, HPC storage architecture using DDN solutions (SSD and SSD‑accelerated GRIDScaler and SFA family systems), high‑bandwidth low‑latency networks and a parallel file system. The upgrade boosted backtesting and analytics performance up to 500%—enabling 5× more workflows in the same time—while cutting OPEX, consolidating data centers, doubling capacity every 6–9 months and scaling to over 140 PB of storage and nearly 2 TB/s aggregate bandwidth, driving measurable revenue and profitability gains.