Nasdaq OMX has gone to Amazon for a new service called FinQloud, where US financial services clients can store the data needed to meet increasingly granular SEC regs or analyze trade data.

FinQloud will host a patent-pending regulatory data retention product called Regulatory Records Retention, or R3, and a fast, on-demand analysis tool is called Self-Service Reporting, or SSR. R3 should be out in the coming months.

Brokers will be able to store order and transaction data and maintain records using FinQloud. That means multi-source data, not just Nasdaq-related trading info.

The exchange says it's adding layers of security. All data connections to FinQloud will pass through an encryption system in private Nasdaq data centers before hitting Amazon's infrastructure, and clients will have to show regulators appropriate documentation to use R3.

Nasdaq says data will be stored and retrieved more cheaply and easily than in brokers' own data centers. It will also use the widgetry for its own market-to-market routing broker to lower its operating costs.

Nasdaq, which will be doing the selling, will use the per-gigabyte fees to compensate for flagging stock trading revenues, down 12% lately. The pair also has ideas about offering the service outside the US.