Open Source Makes Big Gains at the London Stock Exchange

Richard Chapman said on Tuesday, 06 October 2009

Wow. That's gotta hurt. The Microsoft faithful will have to dig deeper into the realm of fantasy to spin the LSE debacle.

Glyn Moody said on Tuesday, 06 October 2009

@richard: or just try to pretend it never happened...

Quan said on Tuesday, 06 October 2009

I really enjoy reading success stories like this because it spokes volume to companies looking for the best cost-effective solutions for their business.

It also says a great deal about the cost of continuing using Microsoft solutions.

And it's about time to break free from Microsoft very-litle-benefit-for-hard-earned-money upgrade cycles.

Glyn Moody said on Tuesday, 06 October 2009

@quan: indeed, you'd be pushed to find a better case study for open source deployments.

Albert said on Tuesday, 06 October 2009

I used to work for a very large multinational. There's lots of inertia in big corporations, which is one reason why many aren't changing to open source. I heard many times: "I don't care what it costs, as long as it works!" Stock trading is a business whose very life depends on computers. Chip designers are scared to death whenever they hear talk of switching to MS. They love their Unix. I'm glad to see the adoption of open source OS's in the marketplace. Even with closed source applications.

Zyo said on Tuesday, 06 October 2009

I think the .NET framework place is more on light stuff that require fast developer such as web and winform rather than ultra speedy stock exchange.

Disclaimer: I'm a .NET programmer since 2002.

Hugh said on Tuesday, 06 October 2009

All too often these deployments don't turn out well.
This Linux + Solaris + whatever system may fail and gives OSS a bad name.

Hans said on Tuesday, 06 October 2009

You sure seemed rather biased in that you quickly mention, and then entirely ignore, that the opportunity for the LSE was to purchase a competing product and the entire corporation and dev team in one stroke at a savings of half the cost of the .NET product. This is no indicator that Open Source or *nix is a better solution for the market space (although it may very well be) - it is a simple business decision that seems to indicate TradElect are not quite as astutely aware of their market as they though they were. There's nothing in your article, except for your allusions, that indicates disadvantages with the .NET approach as opposed to the *nix approach (using the term .NET to mean the Microsoft version of .NET.)

Having read several of your article via links from Slashdot I've noticed that I've never read an objective article with your name attached to it. That's too bad because you should drop the agenda and simply recognize that they're all tools in the toolbox.

Andy said on Tuesday, 06 October 2009

Is this a Microsoft failure or a failure of of TradElect? Maybe you can infer that the platform itself but it appears the app itself failed rather than .Net in general. Not that I'm defending MS here.

Glyn Moody said on Tuesday, 06 October 2009

@albert: indeed, and that's a natural reaction, which makes this switch all-the-more surprising.

Glyn Moody said on Tuesday, 06 October 2009

@hugh: that's always possible, but it's better for open source to be tried rather than ignored.

Glyn Moody said on Tuesday, 06 October 2009

@zyo: you're probably right, since you obviously know the platform well; but that raises the question why .Net was used for this kind of task in the first place.

Glyn Moody said on Tuesday, 06 October 2009

@hans: you're right that it was essentially a business decision. But what's interesting is that it shows that the LSE has no qualms whatsoever in placing its entire platform - and hence future - on a GNU/Linux foundation: this really is a huge vote of confidence in open source.

The article does talk about specific GNU/Linux advantages: "Tony Weeresinghe, MillenniumIT’s CEO, emphasises that the application of Linux at LSE will differ from other trading entities. Linux platform codes at LSE will not need to be modified to enable further upgrades, he explains." The wording's not clear, but that seems to me to suggest a scalability not otherwise available.

And to your final point, this is a blog is called Open Enterprise: it's about the use of open source in the enterprise, so I write from that viewpoint. I don't really aim for objectivity - it's a blog and I have a view - but I do aim for accuracy: I work from the facts. A Microsoft blog would look at those facts differently.

Glyn Moody said on Tuesday, 06 October 2009

@andy: as I quoted above, there's a suggestion (to me, at least) that the new GNU/Linux platform has a scalability that was lacking before.

Similarly the remark about wanting ‘more control, less costs, and the ability to build and innovate’ certainly describes open source's strengths, even if it also relates to the software acquisition.

Joe said on Tuesday, 06 October 2009

Wow, you write three sentences and then staple on someone else's article. Guess it would not be enough to post if you just gave the link to the article? What has "journalism" become?

Glyn Moody said on Tuesday, 06 October 2009

@joe: er, blogging?

nobody special said on Tuesday, 06 October 2009

@Joe, your counting skills are off. Glyn wrote 8 sentences and quoted 12.

nobody special said on Tuesday, 06 October 2009

@Joe, which, by the way, represents much less than 10% of the other article.

Gabriel said on Tuesday, 06 October 2009

Reading the original article it seems to me that the problem is not Microsoft or the .NET platform but Accenture and its product and the business decision of investing in a company and a product to control all aspects of it without anybody in the middle. Indeed, Lester says "He claims that LSE is coming off TradElect not because of the .Net technology itself (although its trading speed is 2.7 milliseconds compared to Linux-based Chi-X’s 0.4 milliseconds), but ‘for more control, less costs, and the ability to build and innovate’. Furthermore, he describes LSE’s experience with .Net as ‘very positive’."

Udi said on Wednesday, 07 October 2009

Boston Stock Exchange and few other Stock Exchanges run on Millennium IT technology. They have not failed. That means LSE wouldn't fail either, once the right processes have been adopted.

Some who are in the Microsoft camp can not think a life beyond that. Actually, there is more outside Microsoft than inside.

Toby Haynes said on Wednesday, 07 October 2009

I think it's good to reflect on all the press releases coming from Microsoft and the LSE around the time that the TradElect system was being pushed into service. This was a setup that Microsoft had worked hard to get into the LSE, it was a huge win for Microsoft to break into a high profile, high visibility setup like the LSE.

That TradElect never met its goals for trading speed, never managed to achieve its availability goals and indeed, managed to shut the LSE for an entire trading day, was a complete disaster for both the LSE and for Microsoft, who had invested considerable time and expertise in underpinning the installation.

That TradElect has now been surplanted by a Linux + Solaris setup which has already met the latency goals that TradElect was supposed to provide is a massive loss of face for Microsoft in this area. Those who point to Accenture and assume they carried the can for this alone are ignoring reality.

DeeK said on Wednesday, 07 October 2009

Gabriel seems to have the best comprehension of the original article. The move is not because of performance reasons, nor because of any failure. It's simply a business decision because Linux is lower cost, very reliable, and LSE get to OWN their technology for half the cost of their current platform.

It's still a big win for Linux, even just because it opens up the mindset of managers worldwide.

Cole Thompson said on Wednesday, 07 October 2009

Outstanding, and from California I send hearty congratulations to the level heads within the London Stock Exchange for this decision. Well done!

Glyn Moody said on Wednesday, 07 October 2009

@Gabriel: that's true, but as Toby Haynes rightly points out in another comment (thanks), Microsoft portrayed this as a huge *win* fir themselves when they got the contract - not a win for the app running on their software. So by the same logic, *losing* that contract to GNU/Linux is a huge blow to them - if only in terms of propaganda, which is partly what this is all about.

There are also indications in the article that GNU/Linux did have some technical advantages, too (see my comments above).

Glyn Moody said on Wednesday, 07 October 2009

@Toby: thanks for that, great point. Wish I'd made it....

Phil Blades said on Wednesday, 07 October 2009

A very interesting article, and one that will keep the LSE busy for a while I imagine. The performance figure for trades is quite startling, but entirely in line with our own findings here at RiverMuse where we are building high performance fault management platforms - scaleabilty and throughput are significant issues - linux is proving capable....

Pierre said on Wednesday, 07 October 2009

Microsoft compensates the loss of corporate sales by Government contracts (tax-payers' cooperation is not necessary).

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<img src="http://trustleap.ch/imgs/perfk.png">

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G-WAN ANSI C scripts are 120x faster than Apache/PHP and 5x faster than IIS 7.0 ASP.Net C#.

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Under attack since its public release, G-WAN has shown no vulnerability -another world record.

TrustLeap already partners with SUN Microsystems so Linux and Solaris versions will follow soon!

Richard H said on Wednesday, 07 October 2009

I guess the loss of nearly a complete days trading on 8th September 2008 with the current system didn't help either:

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/markets/article4703130.ece

hugh said on Wednesday, 07 October 2009

To me, the down time must have been the main push factor, what company can afford that kind of embarassment. Which company would give up a major deployment, no matter the alternative being 5x faster, without that kind of failure.

And with this kind of high profile project, i am sure some pretty competent hotshots were brought in, and yet were not able (did not have time?) to fix the problem!

This is a strong indictment

Glyn Moody said on Wednesday, 07 October 2009

@hugh: exactly: had this been fixable, it would have been. It wasn't and therefore wasn't - pretty damning for the incumbent.

PixelPusher220 said on Wednesday, 07 October 2009

Hasn't the last decade pretty much shown that 'outsourcing' provided no where near the stated ROI? Being a 'user' of software is a far cry from developing it, as they are about to find out.

hobie said on Wednesday, 07 October 2009

I hope they bought tsunami insurance!

Webweave said on Wednesday, 07 October 2009

If you want to own your software, know what it is doing and have the right to do as you please with it there is no choice but to leave MS.

I run a demo center and have to display our product on many different platforms. On any other OS I can do a simple check to see if or what has been changed during the demo but on Windows after a demo I pull the drive and put on a fresh image because so much of the OS is undocumented and it seemingly randomly changes many files for unknown reasons. So many files are changed that I'm not confident using the machine in another demo, unlike every other OS.

MP said on Wednesday, 07 October 2009

You really have to read this enlightening insight into the London Stock Exchange - it's hilarious.

http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&sid=20091002212330353&title=Right+OS.+Unfortunately+wrong+vendor%2C+and+flawed+management.&type=article&order=&hideanonymous=0&pid=792091#c792357

Glyn Moody said on Wednesday, 07 October 2009

@MP: oh dear, doesn't look good....

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Glyn Moody said on Friday, 13 November 2009

the stock exchange has done a good job at keeping this quite xD

Tradelect_user said on Thursday, 26 November 2009

It doesn't mention what language the new system will be built with, I'm assuming C/C++ if it's high performance they require. So other than buffer overflow, dangling pointers, hideous syntax, hideous project structuring, hideous inheritance structure, exorbitant lead time to deliver anything remotely stable, what could go wrong?
Unless it'll be Java... *cry*