2011-02-19

Technical Incident at the London Stock Exchange (yet again!)

While the LSE was complaining that the .Net based system they had developed was the problem that Linux would solve.

Well, they have experienced yet another problem, on the day following the launch of their new system, and this time, they can't blame .Net for it, since it's their new Linux based system that is causing the issues:
The London Stock Exchange has taken steps to resolve a system problem that occurred at 4.30pm yesterday (Tuesday), which saw a delay to the start of the closing auction and knocked out automatic trades during a 42 second period.

The problem occurred a day after the high profile launch of its new matching engine on the main equities market, based on the SUSE Linux system from Novell.

Sources close to the exchange today told Computerworld UK that the problem yesterday involved a system linked to the matching engine. Due to a technical problem, that system sent out the daily automatic message to clients stating that the closing auction was beginning  42 seconds late.
I had stated before that  I am more than convinced that the major drag was the fact that project was outsourced to Accenture. Why? Because in my opinion the .Net platform is a very capable one and second because I have many friends who work in various consultancies and the trend is very clear in these companies.

And also about the acquisition of MilleniumIT and their move to a brand new system: I wouldn't bet too much on that neither. I hope they succeed, but I will follow this story, as the outcome is not so clear to me. Also, my experience is that it's very difficult to work with non-collocated teams. So if you add the time difference, culture clash, take over issues to the distance, the outcome is less than clear.

So far, it looks like I might have been spot on. Will keep an eye on the stories and update accordingly.

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