A Wilmington company has seen its electronic trading-related appliance get the thumbs-up after testing by the Securities Technology Analysis Center (STAC), according to a recent announcement.

Cape City Command, which designed its Trade Xccelerator product to reduce delays – called latency – in electronic trading, announced in a news release that the tests showed that the appliance does what it is supposed to do.

In the series of tests, Trade Xccelerator reduced latency by 87 microseconds – or 17 percent – during periods of low-volume trading, said Tony Pettipiece, Cape City’s global head of sales and marketing.

During high-volume trading, he added, tests showed that the Trade Xccelerator reduced delays by 34 microseconds, or 5 percent.

The Trade Xccelerator, housed in a metal container about the size of a DVD player, basically plays traffic cop, Pettipiece explained, guiding electronic trade transactions into the least-congested and fastest paths to the appropriate exchange. Many trading applications, by contrast, use a simple round-robin routing method, which takes longer, officials said.

Each appliance is equipped to communicate in the protocol, or language, of the exchange it works with, and can speed transaction messages to an exchange anywhere in the world using that exchange’s specific protocol. “Speed” is the operative word, because in electronic trading, microseconds mean everything. Pettipiece said that Cape City’s clients include big banks, hedge funds and proprietary trading firms.

The series of STAC tests, designed with guidance from trading firms and conducted in the International Computer Concepts (ICC) lab, provided independent validation of the product, Pettipiece said.

“We are pleased to have STAC independently verify the Trade Xccelerator capabilities and to have partnered with ICC in reducing latency for the financial community,” he said. “Our unique ability to analyze trading traffic at both the exchange protocol level and at the network opens up the door to increase performance beyond what can be achieved with other solutions.”

Cape City Command, established in Wilmington a few years ago, maintains a development staff in Cary and a sales representative in Chicago – Pettipiece – and in the New York/New Jersey metro area. John Robison, the company’s CEO, is based in Wilmington, company officials said.