NY Stock Exchange Moves To Linux

An anonymous reader writes "Even the old mainframe strongholds, the financial markets, are moving away from big iron. The New York Stock Exchange is one of them, as it's leaving the mainframe for AIX and Linux. They're doing it to save money; it seems that transactions are going to cost half as much on Unix and Linux as they did on the mainframe." The first phase of the transition happened last Monday.

Meme wet dream

[MrNaz (730548)]

In Soviet Russia, Linux-running, chair throwing, Beowulf clusters of shark overlords with laserbeams on their heads welcome you, you insensitive clods!

Cancel or Allow?

Wait, what are we talking about again?

That ad about Windows on stock exchange

[ookabooka (731013)]

Anyone reminded of that ad about the guys printing the newspaper that says they use Windows because its more reliable and stuff? That wasn't for the NYSE was it? I see that ad all the time on Slashdot and roll my eyes every time :-p

Re:That ad about Windows on stock exchange

[UbuntuDupe (970646)]

Windows isn't more reliable ... but the programmers might be a little more sympathetic to user needs ...

"Okay, so how do I register the exchange of a convertible bond on Linux?"
"Er... why would you want to do that?"
"Um ... just trust me on this one ... people like them."
"Well, what's a convertible bond?"
"It's where the holder gets a fixed interest payment and then at maturity, has the option to get a fixed amount of cash, or a fixed amount of stock, his choice."
"That's stupid, you don't need that."
"Um, look, dude, people trade them, so the software has to handle it."
"Well, that's really just a bond attached to a stock option. So just enter it that way."
"Yeah, but in the financial world, it's one transaction."
"Okay ... so when someone buys one, register an 'option purchase' plus a 'bond purchase' by going under this menu ... then use this 'merge' feature ..."
"Holy **** dude, this is a common transaction, why do I have do go through all that every time someone buys a convertible bond?"
"Well, people don't even really buy them that much, do they?"
"I give up."

Re:That ad about Windows on stock exchange

[Lehk228 (705449)]

the windows version just assumes if you select cash once to always do cash, unless you edit the registry key autoSelectMaturityAction to false

It's Ironic...

[saudadelinux (574392)]

...that the OS so many think of as some kind of IP-lethal, grubby commie hippy project is now running a goodly part of Capitalism Itself. The worm has turned, and eats itself!

Moves away from big iron is more accurate

[Timesprout (579035)]

The bulk of the savings seem to be coming from reduced hardware and maintenance costs by getting rid of the mainframe and the savings are the reason they are doing it.

They are not "moving to Linux"

[parvenu74 (310712)]

I know that it's optional around here to RTFA, but the original poster is wrong to title this entry as a move to Linux: this is a primarily move from mainframe to AIX on pSeries, with a few other tasks (FTP) being tossed to Linux like you'd throw a dog a bone. Using this lack of logic, it would be plausible to suggest that the NYSE is "moving to Mac OS X" because a few people in the advertising and marketing department use Macs for their jobs. I realize this isn't Rolling Stone magazine [slashdot.org], but the lack of journalistic quality control here at /. is pathetic.

Re:They are not "moving to Linux"

[mrbooze (49713)]

Not only that, but the pSeries boxes practically *are* big iron. They're basically smaller mainframes that run AIX and linux virtual machines.

So I would say they're moving from Venti Iron to Grande Iron.

Really? The NYSE?

[name*censored* (884880)]

>>They're doing it to save money

Really? The NYSE aren't doing it purely support the FOSS community? Dang, and I thought I knew the NYSE better than that..

hmm

[nomadic (141991)]

What about stability issues? I'd think that these machines would have to be a little bit more robust than linux is capable of being at the moment.

Re:hmm

[xzvf (924443)]

That's a good question, but on Wall Street, speed and latentcy are becoming more importantant factors than stabiltiy. That's the reason why most brokerages locate their primary data center in Manhatten, or co-locate with the NYSE. A crash that effects everybody equally is preferable to odd processing delays. No data is better than slow data is an old mantra in the trading feild, and even more important when trading is triggered electronically and milliseconds count.

Begin the invasion

[Spookticus (985296)]

Thats one small step for penguins, one giant leap for penguin kind. Now I can invest in Linux companies while I am doing it on a Linux machine and the transaction being processed by Linux :)

what was it on before?

[brunascle (994197)]

ctrl-f tells me they didnt mention microsoft or windows. if it wasnt on *nix before, what was it on?

Licensing Fees

[Ngarrang (1023425)]

In my brief experience with an IBM AS/400 (before it was renamed), it seemed like my old company was paying as much annual licensing and support fees as the system originally cost. The software we ran got more expensive as the system went faster. I never quite understand that pricing scheme, since the software didn't actually do anything NEW.

Good move for the NYSE.

Re:Licensing Fees

[Clover_Kicker (20761)]

IBM will support your old hardware almost forever.

They don't enjoy it, though - they have to stock a zillion old parts for a zillion old architectures, they have to train new guys on stuff that was obsolete before they got out of diapers.

They gradually crank up maintenance fees to "encourage" you to upgrade to new kit that is easier to support.

NY Stock Exchange Moves To Linux

[robably (1044462)]

In case anyone needs to look it up, Linux is in Eastern Europe between Serbia and Romania.

Happy to help.

Wonder if someone really dropped the ball.

[Kadin2048 (468275)]

Well, the migration strategy seems interesting, although not especially surprising; they've eschewed emulation strategies that might incur a performance penalty in favor of some company that actually recompiles the old COBOL and IBM JCL code for modern architectures and does a lot of in-house QA (and, one assumes, has really good support...). They're using smaller IBM AIX servers to actually run the code in the new system, with the HP Linux machines basically doing all the I/O and general feeding of data.

I'm a little surprised that IBM didn't manage to sell them on a new mainframe, or at least on its own clustered solution; or that they didn't ditch IBM completely and go with somebody else (what I'd suspect if somehow someone at IBM had really stepped on the wrong foot).

There's not a whole lot of information in TFA about their old system, which actually sounds like it must be fairly neat; it's only described as a "1,600 MIPS mainframe" and then from context it's clear that it's an IBM of some sort. Another surprising thing is that they complain that the software licenses for it, among other things, are prohibitively expensive -- you'd think that IBM, in danger of losing a mainframe customer completely to commodity kit, would cut them some sort of a cheap-or-free deal on the software just to keep them around and on the support contracts. (I really gotta wonder if someone really boned this up; I mean, if you can't keep a mainframe contract at a place like the NYSE, really, what are you doing?)

In News Yet To Be Released News

[packetmon (977047)]

Microsoft says New York Stock Exchange infringes on Microsoft's patent "Letter C in System". Microsoft broad patent invoking the use of the letter C on a file system has some industry experts worried. "We were completely unaware that Microsoft had the rights to the letter c on any operating system. This is going to cost us enormously. We thought we would save twice as much money, but with this frivolous lawsuit pending, we stand to lose four times as much" stated an anonymous expert at the NYSE." Microsoft's shared plummeted after an irrate Linux developer injected a logicbomb code on NYSE servers.

The savings comparison seems misleading

[Ace905 (163071)]

The article makes it sound like transactions are on a cost-per basis, "[Francis Feldman] estimates the move will halve the cost of transactions" -- does that make any sense?

I think the author of the article got into a tangent with him about how many transactions they do, and what their operating costs are and then incorrectly made the correlation that there is a cost-per-transaction from a computing stand-point. That can't be true. You don't insert fifties into the A: drive.

Look at it this way: If they make the big switch, and all of a sudden they can handle double-the-transactions per day - that would halve the cost of transactions. Only there's not going to all of a sudden be double-the-transactions. They're still working with the same number of transactions.

If they halve their staff, and they do the same number of transactions than that halves their costs. But what if tuesday is a slow day, and they only do 60% of their normal business? They're still paying for all the staff, electricity and third party support.

Am I wrong, or is it unlikely they can correlate a cost per transaction in this case?

---
This is completely free. [douginadress.com]

NASDAQ

[rlp (11898)]

The NASDAQ also uses Unix. They use fault-tolerant Unix boxes from HP (formerly Tandem).

To quote Keanu Reeves, "Whoa"

[smooth wombat (796938)]

To test Clerity, Feldman and his team collected some batch and CICS application code, sent it to Clerity and said he would be at Clerity's development center in 24 hours to see the results. Clerity passed.

Now that's service. I realize it's only compiling one code into another form but being able to take the code, compile it into what you need AND still have it work correctly in a 24 hour period is no easy feat.

If nothing else, other firms will look at this migration to an aix/linux platform and see the cost benefits of doing so. After all, if the NYSE has done it, it can't be a bad thing.

actually it's aix

[portscan (140282)]

the trades will be managed by aix and linux will just be used for "ftp transfers on the front end." this would be bulk data transfers, not data feeds and all i/o as other might have suggested. i can pretty much guarantee you that the nyse is not processing trades and sending out live market data (to bloomberg, retuters, etc.) by ftp.

also, i am somewhat concerned by this move in light of the trading disruption at the end of february where the existing (mainframe, i presume) trading systems could not handle all the trades and the data feeds were way behind the actual prices of the securities. i know the nyse is a public for-profit company now, so it's silly to talk about "public interest" but shouldn't there be some regulation about the capacity of their IT infrastructure to make sure that their cost-cutting doesn't cause another 4% decrease in stock market value on an abnormally high trading day?

Re:TWNBWFM

[E IS mC(Square) (721736)]

Nothing to do with MS in this.

MS will be affected only when the wall street firms stop using MS Excel, and that may not happen in my lifetime unfortunately.

Re:TWNBWFM

[Vellmont (569020)]

This Will Not Bode Well For Microsoft

Why? As far as Microsoft is concerned this is either a non-event (they weren't using microsoft before, they aren't now), or a slight move towards using Microsoft (going from a Mainframe to PCs moves them closer to the potential to use Microsoft software).

Re:TWNBWFM

[jstretch78 (1102633)]

No, he just wanted to use the word 'bode'.