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NYSE Goes To Linux
Aligrip writes "It appears that IBM has convinced the folks at the Securities Industry Automation Corp (SIAC) to move their entire trading network to Linux as explained in this article in the Investors Business Daily. The authors predict that this deal could give Linux "a hot new beachhead with financial institutions". Cool!"
Finally, a place for hackers at banks that doesn't involve maintaining 30yr old Cobol programs!
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
Maybe they can put some code in there to boost some of the Linux stocks now...
NYSE is supported by SIAC, not SAIC. SAIC is "Science Applications International Corporation".
With NYSE making this move, it's very likely that AMEX, NSCC & GSCC will eventually make this move as well, since they are all supported by SIAC.
- Former SIAC consultant
Graham says SIAC converted to Linux quickly because of the software's open, flexible nature. "We were able to port our Artmail application in about two-and-a-half days," Graham said.
I would speculate they weren't running NT before if it was that easy to port their software over. So this takes a chunk out of the proprietary Unix market, sure, but if we were to consider this a Zero Sum game, Unix loses, Linux gains, Microsoft doesn't change a thing.
Now granted, other Unix shops might now say 'Well, if the NYSE does it, we can do it too!' But the Microsoft market won't feel any pressure from this until there is a similar porting comment when coming from a Windows shop.
It pains me to say this but it probably won't matter much what OS is underneath the trading software (except for performance gains etc...) because I doubt the traders ever see the OS at all. It's great PR for linux, but like all PR wins it will probably be short lived. I wouldn't expect traders to wake up each day and say to themselves "Self, I'm using Linux at work. That's neat." It just won't happen...
As for the distribution that would be used, I doubt that matters much either...
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Simple... coming soon to an MSN owned subsidiary near you: "NYSE Trading Systems Unreliable, says Independant Mindcraft Report."
--
I like to watch.
They can say whatever they want. Linux will bloom people!
Yes. But behind-the-scenes transaction handling has no connection to the desktop world. I am tired of seeing every article like "Home Depot to use Linux-driven cash registers" turned into a reason for zealotry.
WAY too many financial institutions use M$ languages and OS's for their internal users... like customer support and other operations centers. VB applications abound...
I've found that the best way to get companies to move away from M$ programming languages is to suggest the portability and standardization and other benefits that occur when you start making your apps available through a web interface. Then, as the developer on that project, keep everything as cross-platform, cross-browser as possible. Once the frontend/interface doesn't require a M$ language to support it, there becomes less of a reason to stay on the architecture.
In addition, this approach is becoming much more successful since EVERYONE is trying to cut costs... and what's a better way to cut costs then eliminate the need for costly M$ licenses?
Slashdot uses MySQL, anyone using MySQL and a large db with lots of traffic knows MySQL is not suited for the task, thats why slashdot goes down. Im sure NYSE knows about this and will choose either oracle or another larger db on a different OS. when NYSE sais they are switching to linux they dont say what parts they are switching, all or some.
Chris Lee
lee@mediawaveonline.com
They will be using Linux as the platform for the messaging and information systems between the Exchange and the brokers/dealers, not the actual Exchange itself. I'm not saying these systems are not mission critical, I'm just reading the article!
Running the actual Exchange would be a major coop, but I don't think there is any chance of seeing that happen for a few years yet.
Note: I'm not saying Linux can't be used to run the Exchange, but I think this is best handled by a full-blown enterprise platform at this point in the development of Linux.
Just an errant thought as I read the article. Could it be the old giant, IBM has shown us some of the blue-fu that has kept this company around near or on the top for so many years ? For example:
... selling services. Let's face it, there's not much in the way of COTS that Microsoft can FUD with when it comes to Wall Streeters, and their propensity to roll and re-roll their own apps.
Bird 1 - undercutting Sun high-end
"SIAC's Artmail applications previously ran on Sun Microsystems Inc. servers that used Unix. But they will now run on IBM Linux servers linked to an IBM mainframe system."
IBM's girthieness has been a liability in the past. Not so much for the hardware itself; though expensive. Rather, much of the rub has been on the expense and limitations of its operating system, as anyone using MVS will attest. Linux literally flips that around against it's competitors, forcing companies such as Sun's high-end to compete chip-to-chip with IBM's mid to low end iron.
Stone 2 - Microsoft's cost of Open Source argument
"Though basic Linux software is free, IBM makes money by selling the middleware that links Linux with existing software and computer systems at places like SIAC. It also makes money by selling Linux servers and services for Linux-based systems."
Here IBM parlays one of its biggest, and most enduring strengths
Kudos to someone where at Itty Bitty Machines for figuring this one out.
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
A few weeks ago our system (which handles 70% of all the trades sent to NASDAQ) accidentally sent too many position updates to NASDAQ, something like 200 per second for 20 seconds, and all on a test stock. Not that many, and well within the spec that NASDAQ tells us to stay within, but it crashed NASDAQ's Small Order Execution System (SOES) for all stocks for 20 minutes.
NASDAQ was mad at us for sending so many positions, but it was really their fault for not being able to handle a volume of traffic that they publish that they can handle.
I can't tell you if the part of NASDAQ that crashed is handled by their new NT stuff, or if it was the older Solaris and Tandem parts. But it makes me think that if the tech stock bubble hadn't burst when it did, NASDAQ would have quickly run out of steam and melted down under the shear pressure of increasing trading volumes.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
It's not a matter of "big iron" and "geek desktops". It's about servers. The reason you don't see point-of-sale systems on Linux is that Linux--like any Unix--is still a relatively awkward choice for standalone and small-network desktop use. It's easy enough to get running for one-off engineering workstations and for hundreds or thousands of X terminals, but the cost savings and overall benefits of a Unix just aren't there for those 5-100 seat mixed-use installations found in most desktop environments.
.5TB range can run on Linux now. And that's a lot of databases.
.NET) or with Java. And since that Java code really does move--unmodified--from Windows developer workstations to staging servers and production boxes that can be running any of a good dozen OSes on hardware going all the way up to mainframes, with application servers that are increasingly interoperable and interchangeable, Java's looking pretty good.
Want a stable, non-windowed PC-based cash register? Linux gives you nothing you can't get with DOS, Netware or OS/2-based systems. There's little reason for vendors to port, and the application is so narrow that Linux offers nothing but a savings on OS licenses, which are insignificant to the cost of a 5-station point-of-sale system.
Running a small- to mid-sized office? Linux is a decent way to save on servers, and many companies do so, buying mail and file-sharing appliances like Cobalt Qubes, or IBM's Small Business Server software bundle, which gives small but ambitious companies a nicely priced bundle of DB2, Domino and Websphere. Still others bring on the accountant's nephew to set up a Samba server or two. But on the desktop? Unix and Linux office suites are mediocre at best, the best being slower and more memory-hungry than MS Office. And you can be the one to tell the senior managers how good Linux is the tenth time they can't properly open an MS Office file that was mailed to them.
Where Linux is taking over the world is on servers, and now it's not just the usual HTTP, Samba, DNS and SMTP services. In the past year, with good 1.3.x JVMs from Sun and IBM, Linux is now on par with any other platform, dollar for dollar, for running J2EE application servers.
If you're running clusters of Weblogic, Websphere or other EJB/servlet/JSP engines (Tomcat, JRun, EJBoss, etc.), there's simply no longer any technical reason to do it on Solaris, HPUX, Win2K or AIX. If you have a decent JVM (as Linux has) and decent networking and memory management (as Linux has, especially with 2.4), that's all that really matters. Why pay $700, $3000 or more on OS licenses and OS support per machine for something that you just want to (1) stay up and (2) run a Java app server or one or more of its support systems like a message queue?
Moreover, the move to journaling filesystems and better support for external storage, and the availability of many mainstream commercial-grade backup and system management tools means Linux is also a perfectly good way to run all those 1-4 CPU database servers. Oracle and DB2 on Linux aren't going to eat into the Sun E10000's turf or IBM's OS/400 and System/390 spaces just yet, but all those databases running on 1U-5U rack equipment with storage in the
Add to that the fact that Linux has become (officially or not) the reference platform for a lot of Unix software, and the reference x86 Unix for many others (see Sybase) and Linux looks poised to eat not just the low end but also the middle of the server market.
The success of server-side Java has a lot to do with this. Right now, the overwhelming share of new server-side development is being done either with the MS platform (ASP, MTS, COM and the early bits of
Sure Linux is seriously eating into proprietary Unix market share, but think about it a little more carefully. These guys are looking for something that's cheaper and easier to deploy than the Sun boxes they're currently using. Without Linux, the only choices are 1)eat the costs and stick with Unix, 2)port to Windows (also at considerable expense).
The breadth of offerings available for Linux (cheap 1U boxes, Mainframe LPARS, massive servers) make it a natural choice for people who might otherwise leave the Unix world altogether. It's easy to port from Unix to Linux, and you can run your app. on any hardware imaginable.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
Don't think for a second that MS execs' stomachs are not turning over about this deal.
This is a key financial services application, and opens the door for acceptance of linux in key financial markets. Microsoft was going to undersell and overmarket traditional UNIX vendors and eat into the server market. Once their foot was in the door, extend and embrace.
Guess what - the markets grow from the bottom. It happened with DOS against MacOS. It happened with Windows95 against OS/2. It happened with NT against Unix. And now it is happening with linux against Windows.
This could have been a HUGE win for Microsoft. Instead, it is another notch in IBM's belt, and a huge boost for linux in the perception of CTOs. Microsoft can't buy that kind of publicity.