The Bank of New York: G-Trade Success Story
When corporations, financial institutions, governments and other organizations need to make large-volume securities trades, they often turn to The Bank of New York. Through BNY Securities Group, The Bank of New York is the world’s largest institutional agency brokerage organization. G-Trade Services Ltd., a subsidiary of The Bank of New York and a member of BNY Securities Group, is a leader in wholesale trade execution services in 65 countries and 80 markets around the world. Through a unique joint venture between G-Trade and BLOOMBERG TRADEBOOK, institutional investors have access to all of G-Trade’s electronic markets through their Bloomberg screens, including connections to dozens of global markets.
Among the most popular services G-Trade provides is basket trading. This service enables institutional investors to create and save their own custom “trade lists” and place a single order for multiple symbols with complex trading strategies and instructions all at once, quickly and easily. While explosive growth in G-Trade’s basket trading business represented a major revenue opportunity, the company needed to keep pace with escalating demand. This pressed the limits of its 32-bit–based information technology (IT) infrastructure.
“Our basket trading business was growing exponentially, and we were manually overseeing each step of the entire process,” says Joseph Weisbord, chief technology officer of G-Trade Services. “Because of the limits of our existing 32-bit x86 servers, we could no longer handle larger baskets and growing trading volumes efficiently. We faced a major technological barrier to business growth.”
Seizing a lucrative business opportunity
To add to the challenge, basket trading is like rush-hour traffic, with major spikes at the beginning, middle and end of each month, when institutional traders submit orders equaling thousands of lines of stock trades to G-Trade’s Basket Systems.
To cope with extreme business growth, G-Trade began carving the baskets into manageable portions and processing them across servers. Initially, the company expanded its IT infrastructure for basket trading horizontally, deploying dozens of 32-bit servers to accommodate the rapid increase in trading volume and complexity. Once basket trading was spread across this many disparate servers, managing and controlling the basket trading process started becoming unwieldy.
“Baskets of stocks typically have a relationship with one another and require close monitoring and algorithmic analysis to be executed in the proper sequence and amounts,” says Gerard Verdone, vice president and head of infrastructure for G-Trade Services. “Once we started dispersing basket trades across a variety of systems, it was difficult to manage the flow of trading and maintain close control.”
HP worked with G-Trade to develop an Adaptive Enterprise, synchronizing its IT resources with business needs to capitalize on business growth and change. Today, G-Trade Services has removed a critical barrier to business growth by upgrading from a 32-bit system to a 64-bit solution based on 4-way HP Integrity servers with Intel Itanium 2 processors running Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition.
“Once the Itanium 2–based HP Integrity servers went live, we were immediately able to handle our basket trading business without the need to spread the work across dozens of servers. We also maintained the process control we wanted,” says Weisbord. “We achieved a return on investment from our HP and Windows solution within approximately three months, and that’s an exceptionally conservative estimate.”
Deploying a rock solid solution
In addition to providing rapid return on investment and paving the way for increased revenues on an ongoing basis, the HP, Intel and Microsoft solution provides the uptime and reliability required for G-Trade’s missioncritical trading needs. The company begins trading at 6:00 p.m. each Sunday evening and trades around the clock until 5:00 p.m. each Friday afternoon. There is no room for downtime or batch processing.
“We execute, clear and settle complex basket trades, 24 hours a day, around the globe,” says Verdone. “From an IT standpoint, one of our biggest challenges is zero tolerance for downtime for recovery.”
HP Integrity servers running Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition have proven to be a rock-solid foundation for business-critical applications such as G-Trade’s 24x7 global equity trading platform.
“Our HP Integrity servers running Windows Server 2003 have not gone down once since we turned them on,” says Verdone. “The HP, Intel and Microsoft solution is worthy of the most demanding enterprise processing.” To augment the extreme reliability of the HP Integrity servers, G-Trade uses HP Care Pack services. These business-critical support services cover all key IT areas across G-Trade, from servers to networking.
“HP Care Pack services give us a single point of contact for support, including escalating to Microsoft any operating software issues that might arise,” says Weisbord.
Transitioning from 32- to 64-bit
G-Trade Services’ global equity trading platform is an application written in Java™ that the company developed in-house. Given the extreme business-critical nature of its system, the company was initially wary of moving from a 32- to a 64-bit infrastructure. The fears proved unfounded when the IT team made the transition almost overnight.
“We recompiled our Java application, literally copying the software from one machine to the other, tweaking one or two user interfaces, and we were ready to go,” says Verdone. “Our transition to HP Integrity servers was incredibly fast and painless.”
Removing barriers to business growth Now, instead of running out of steam, G-Trade Services is operating full-speed ahead. The ceiling on the number and size of trading baskets is gone. The global equity trading application runs at least 30 percent faster. The main impetus behind the upgrade for G-Trade Services was the financial benefit of being able to handle larger basket trading volumes to increase revenues. Since moving to HP Integrity servers, G-Trade has increased basket trading portfolio size by nearly 500 percent.
“We have taken the block out from under the gas pedal. By using the latest technological advancements, the [Intel] Itanium microarchitecture has taken our performance to new levels,” says Weisbord. “Since moving to Itanium 2–based HP Integrity servers, the business side of the house is exceptionally happy with the IT side of the house.”
A longtime HP, Intel and Microsoft customer, G-Trade Services committed itself to HP servers based on Intel processors and Microsoft operating systems in the 1990s, long before these systems were considered worthy of running the mission-critical applications typical of large trading organizations. That decision has since proven wise.
“We have been an HP, Windows and Intel customer since our inception,” says Weisbord. “We could have gone with Sun five years ago, but the cost was so much higher, which at the time was an unacceptable proposition for a startup. Now, we see that we made the right decision. Our HP, Intel and Microsoft solution was not only the best choice for new technology investments several years ago—the same remains true today.”
© 2005 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.
Intel and Itanium are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. Java is a U.S. trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. Microsoft and Windows are U.S. registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.
G-Trade Services Ltd. is a single purpose business serving BLOOMBERG TRADEBOOK LLC, member NASD/SIPC, and its affiliates. G-Trade is a division of Pershing LLC, member NASD/NYSE/SIPC in the United States and of G-Trade Services Ltd. in Bermuda. G-Trade Services Ltd. is regulated by the Bermuda Monetary Authority and a member of the Bermuda Stock Exchange. BNY Securities Group is an organization consisting of several brokerdealers and other companies. BLOOMBERG TRADEBOOK is a registered trademark of Bloomberg L.P.
Among the most popular services G-Trade provides is basket trading. This service enables institutional investors to create and save their own custom “trade lists” and place a single order for multiple symbols with complex trading strategies and instructions all at once, quickly and easily. While explosive growth in G-Trade’s basket trading business represented a major revenue opportunity, the company needed to keep pace with escalating demand. This pressed the limits of its 32-bit–based information technology (IT) infrastructure.
“Our basket trading business was growing exponentially, and we were manually overseeing each step of the entire process,” says Joseph Weisbord, chief technology officer of G-Trade Services. “Because of the limits of our existing 32-bit x86 servers, we could no longer handle larger baskets and growing trading volumes efficiently. We faced a major technological barrier to business growth.”
Seizing a lucrative business opportunity
To add to the challenge, basket trading is like rush-hour traffic, with major spikes at the beginning, middle and end of each month, when institutional traders submit orders equaling thousands of lines of stock trades to G-Trade’s Basket Systems.
To cope with extreme business growth, G-Trade began carving the baskets into manageable portions and processing them across servers. Initially, the company expanded its IT infrastructure for basket trading horizontally, deploying dozens of 32-bit servers to accommodate the rapid increase in trading volume and complexity. Once basket trading was spread across this many disparate servers, managing and controlling the basket trading process started becoming unwieldy.
“Baskets of stocks typically have a relationship with one another and require close monitoring and algorithmic analysis to be executed in the proper sequence and amounts,” says Gerard Verdone, vice president and head of infrastructure for G-Trade Services. “Once we started dispersing basket trades across a variety of systems, it was difficult to manage the flow of trading and maintain close control.”
HP worked with G-Trade to develop an Adaptive Enterprise, synchronizing its IT resources with business needs to capitalize on business growth and change. Today, G-Trade Services has removed a critical barrier to business growth by upgrading from a 32-bit system to a 64-bit solution based on 4-way HP Integrity servers with Intel Itanium 2 processors running Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition.
“Once the Itanium 2–based HP Integrity servers went live, we were immediately able to handle our basket trading business without the need to spread the work across dozens of servers. We also maintained the process control we wanted,” says Weisbord. “We achieved a return on investment from our HP and Windows solution within approximately three months, and that’s an exceptionally conservative estimate.”
Deploying a rock solid solution
In addition to providing rapid return on investment and paving the way for increased revenues on an ongoing basis, the HP, Intel and Microsoft solution provides the uptime and reliability required for G-Trade’s missioncritical trading needs. The company begins trading at 6:00 p.m. each Sunday evening and trades around the clock until 5:00 p.m. each Friday afternoon. There is no room for downtime or batch processing.
“We execute, clear and settle complex basket trades, 24 hours a day, around the globe,” says Verdone. “From an IT standpoint, one of our biggest challenges is zero tolerance for downtime for recovery.”
HP Integrity servers running Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition have proven to be a rock-solid foundation for business-critical applications such as G-Trade’s 24x7 global equity trading platform.
“Our HP Integrity servers running Windows Server 2003 have not gone down once since we turned them on,” says Verdone. “The HP, Intel and Microsoft solution is worthy of the most demanding enterprise processing.” To augment the extreme reliability of the HP Integrity servers, G-Trade uses HP Care Pack services. These business-critical support services cover all key IT areas across G-Trade, from servers to networking.
“HP Care Pack services give us a single point of contact for support, including escalating to Microsoft any operating software issues that might arise,” says Weisbord.
Transitioning from 32- to 64-bit
G-Trade Services’ global equity trading platform is an application written in Java™ that the company developed in-house. Given the extreme business-critical nature of its system, the company was initially wary of moving from a 32- to a 64-bit infrastructure. The fears proved unfounded when the IT team made the transition almost overnight.
“We recompiled our Java application, literally copying the software from one machine to the other, tweaking one or two user interfaces, and we were ready to go,” says Verdone. “Our transition to HP Integrity servers was incredibly fast and painless.”
Removing barriers to business growth Now, instead of running out of steam, G-Trade Services is operating full-speed ahead. The ceiling on the number and size of trading baskets is gone. The global equity trading application runs at least 30 percent faster. The main impetus behind the upgrade for G-Trade Services was the financial benefit of being able to handle larger basket trading volumes to increase revenues. Since moving to HP Integrity servers, G-Trade has increased basket trading portfolio size by nearly 500 percent.
“We have taken the block out from under the gas pedal. By using the latest technological advancements, the [Intel] Itanium microarchitecture has taken our performance to new levels,” says Weisbord. “Since moving to Itanium 2–based HP Integrity servers, the business side of the house is exceptionally happy with the IT side of the house.”
A longtime HP, Intel and Microsoft customer, G-Trade Services committed itself to HP servers based on Intel processors and Microsoft operating systems in the 1990s, long before these systems were considered worthy of running the mission-critical applications typical of large trading organizations. That decision has since proven wise.
“We have been an HP, Windows and Intel customer since our inception,” says Weisbord. “We could have gone with Sun five years ago, but the cost was so much higher, which at the time was an unacceptable proposition for a startup. Now, we see that we made the right decision. Our HP, Intel and Microsoft solution was not only the best choice for new technology investments several years ago—the same remains true today.”
© 2005 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.
Intel and Itanium are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. Java is a U.S. trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. Microsoft and Windows are U.S. registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.
G-Trade Services Ltd. is a single purpose business serving BLOOMBERG TRADEBOOK LLC, member NASD/SIPC, and its affiliates. G-Trade is a division of Pershing LLC, member NASD/NYSE/SIPC in the United States and of G-Trade Services Ltd. in Bermuda. G-Trade Services Ltd. is regulated by the Bermuda Monetary Authority and a member of the Bermuda Stock Exchange. BNY Securities Group is an organization consisting of several brokerdealers and other companies. BLOOMBERG TRADEBOOK is a registered trademark of Bloomberg L.P.
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