| IBM helps New York Stock Exchange achieve virtually zero-downtime trading IBM has announced that it is working with the New York Stock Exchange on the Exchange’s new ‘TradeWorks’ order management and messaging system, which is currently in its pilot stage. This will be one of the world's most sophisticated examples of what IBM is terming ‘extreme availability,’ relying on IBM computers, infrastructure software and engineering expertise for a network designed to virtually eliminate downtime.
IBM's WebSphere infrastructure software, DB2 data management software
and Tivoli management software will act as the back-end engine room
for TradeWorks, processing and choreographing the huge flow of transactions
with ultra-high reliability. The DB2 backend will run on IBM mainframe
running zOS. While reliability is important to every company, NYSE is among the few organisations that truly require uninterrupted availability - as close to 100 percent as possible. The NYSE is the world's largest stock exchange, with 2,750 companies listed and a total market capitalisation of more than $17.8 trillion. Since 2002, the average number of shares traded has risen from approximately 1 billion a day to 1.6 billion. Today, brokers collectively send and receive an average of 75,000 messages a day - up 200 percent in the last two years. The Exchange wanted to ensure the highest reliability possible - anticipating the unlikely but inevitable hardware software failures and other unpredictable factors such as sudden spikes in trade activity - while also aiming for sub-second response times for users of the system. A team of more than 50 IBM researchers, software designers and financial industry experts from around the world has been working with the Exchange on custom technologies, advanced engineering methods and ultra-rigorous testing procedures aimed at helping establish NYSE extreme availability. Some of the pioneering technologies and processes emerging from the project are expected to spill into IBM's work with other customers with similar requirements and commercialised in IBM's software products. "While the stock market can be unpredictable, the technology running it can't be," said Mills, the IBM Software chief. "Any service outage can cause serious disruptions and unrest in financial markets around the world. We're delighted that the Exchange decided IBM middleware could best meet its stringent performance and reliability requirements, and that the work we're doing together will end up benefiting the financial services industry at large and other industries." "TradeWorks speeds and enriches the flow of information between the trading floor and the end customer, which is crucial in today's fast-paced trading environment," said NYSE Chief Technology Officer Burkhardt. "To make it happen, we needed a brand new infrastructure with greater scalability and extreme availability. We also needed the flexibility that comes from proven, standards-based technology so we can more quickly and easily introduce tech upgrades and changes in the future."
•Date:
17th Dec 2004 • Region: N.America •Type:
Article •Topic:
IT continuity |
