Microsoft was heavily involved

Posted Jan 23, 2010 7:46 UTC (Sat) by ClarkMills (guest, #11490)
Parent article: London Stock Exchange begins migration to Linux-based trading platform (ComputerworldUK)

Hi all.

An article on M/S' showcase site: www.onwindows.com

26 October 2005
...
Andrew King, group director of financial services at Microsoft, said: "As a key strategic technology partner with the London Stock Exchange that places our .NET Framework and SQL Server database at its core, Infolect [the software] is an important milestone project for Microsoft, as well as the exchange's Technology Roadmap.

"The ever increasing demand for real-time, mission-critical data fluidity that underpins efficient trading has been answered by powerfully deployed, innovative and scaleable Microsoft technology."
...

http://www.onwindows.com/Articles/London-Stock-Exchange-implements-Infolect/582/Default.aspx

Reading the January 21 2010 ComputerWorld article (TFA), it is written in a very Linux-negative tone. The first sentence of the article reads: "The London Stock Exchange has begun a twelve-month migration to its new trading platform, based on Linux, as trading fell sharply."

Microsoft is only mentioned once: "It will replace the outgoing TradElect platform, based on Microsoft .Net architecture and upgraded by Accenture only two years ago at a cost of £40 million."

It reads as if all the blame has been heaped on TradElect yet reading the prior articles there was obviously very tight linkage between M/S & TradElect.

Example: LSE CIO: "We like having a supplier we can touch and shout at and kick when something goes wrong," said Lester. "With Microsoft we have a partnership that goes all the way up to Steve Ballmer. At HP, we have a partnership that goes all the way up to Carly [Fiorina]. If anything goes wrong with our systems we will point the finger very publicly at them, and that makes them good suppliers."

ZDNet 2003:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39117009,00.htm

Have a look at the video on M/S site specifically note at 01:20 LSE CTO:

"Infolect was the first mission critical system to go live on the M/S .NET framework."

This is M/S' showcase project to try prove their metal. There are several shots in the video of a newspaper article "LSE chooses Windows over Linux for reliability"

Video here: mms://wm.microsoft.com/ms/windowsserversystem/facts/videos/LSE_CaseStudy_Rev_750k.wmv

http://www.microsoft.com/uk/getthefacts/lse.mspx

It's obvious that this was a M/S showpiece project and that M/S would have done everything possible to prop it up.

Cheers... Clark

Apologies for the rant, I just got back from [the fantastic] LCA and am half asleep. :)