Notice of Intent to Sole Source to KX Systems Inc for Insights Data Enablement Pack Software

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) intends to award a sole source contract to KX Systems Inc for Insights Data Enablement Pack software.  Insights Data Enablement Pack software continues the functionality of KDB+ software, currently in use at the SEC, which will go end-of-life (EOL) in the near future.

KX Systems is the primary developer and copyright owner of a financial time series database and platform known as “KDB+” based upon the “K” software, originally developed by Arthur Whitney for Morgan Stanley and spun off in 1993.  K is an APL-based vector programming language, with “KDB+” being the binary format with which K saves tabular data as a database.  The “q” language is the 4th iteration of the KDB+ language with a somewhat simplified syntax. KDB+, which uses the Q language, is an industry standard for saving time series financial data in a columnar format, and was designed to accelerate queries in a situation where disk space, networking, and multi-processor availability is limited.  KDB+ can efficiently sweep billions of rows of data in seconds. 

Since 2015, the SEC has used multiple versions of the Q software, database, and language (from 3.2 up to 4.). The SEC stores approximately 300 TB of market and Registrant data in KDB+. Q is used by developers, examiners, and quantitative consultants to ingest datasets of up to100 Billion lines in size to do analyses related to customer execution quality, trade data and other analytics. 

The SEC has a need for software to replace the functionality of the KDB+ software currently in use.  The software must have the capability to meet the SEC’s need for reading extremely large cold CSVs and other archival data and to allow modifications and corrections to this data, to allow joining of market data, and to allow a sorted, partitioned, optimized result to be stored to disk, so that later analytics can quickly retrieve data relevant to analytics questions asked by Exam review.  Moreover, the software must work effectively with existing SEC code base and avoid the need for redevelopment, conversion, and data migration.

Only Insights Data Enablement Pack can ingest, process and store extremely large datasets accurately and efficiently to meet the SEC’s requirements. Insights Data Enablement Pack has the unique capability to meet the SEC’s need for reading extremely large cold CSVs and other archival data, and includes the ability for required modifications and corrections to this data, to allow joining of market data, and to allow a sorted, partitioned, optimized result to be stored to disk to be retrieved later for further analytics.  Furthermore, use of Insights Data Enablement Pack software will eliminate the need for extensive code base redevelopment as well as the conversion, and possibly data migration, of the existing data in using another solution that does not fully-satisfy the SEC’s requirements.  Specifically, the complex code baseline rewrites could lead to functional issues within the applications, impact operability (uptime) and result in an inability to perform timely data analytics that are critical to examinations, and take an estimated two years to fully redevelop and convert the existing data leading to an unacceptable gap in mission critical support to the SEC.

KX Systems Inc. does not currently utilize any distributors or resellers, so Insights Data Enablement Pack software can only be purchased as a sole source directly from KX Systems Inc.

The SEC intends to solicit and negotiate with only one source under the authority of FAR 13.501(a), sole source acquisitions.

Responsible sources may submit a capability statement, proposal, or quotation, which shall be considered by the agency.  This notice of intent is not a request for competitive proposals.  The SEC will not be responsible for any cost incurred in preparation of capability statements, proposals, or quotations.  A determination by the SEC not to compete this proposed contract based upon responses to this notice is solely with the discretion of the SEC.  Information received will normally be considered solely for the purpose of determining whether to conduct a competitive procurement.  No solicitation or additional information will be made available with regard to this sole source notice.

Any responses to this notice of contract action shall be submitted electronically to Michael Boyle (boylemi@sec.gov) no later than May 27, 2022 at 10:00am (ET).