Nasdaq Adopts NT-Based Monitoring as System of Record - Company Operations - Brief Article

ENT, Oct 20, 1999

The Nasdaq Stock Market named a Windows NT-based system for analyzing and monitoring market behavior its system of record.

The system has been a proof point for the mission-critical abilities of Microsoft's product set and an opportunity for Nasdaq to underscore the technology of one of its most important stock listings: MSFT.

The Surveillance Delivery RealTime (SDR) system monitors market transactions within two seconds and alerts Nasdaq MarketWatch analysts to unusual trading patterns. SDR is designed to handle analysis of up to 4 million trades per day, a figure that exceeds current daily peaks. The system is not part of the back end for actual Nasdaq trading.

The SDR monitor went live Sept. 2, and Nasdaq declared it the system of record Sept. 27.

Microsoft technologies form the core of SDR. The platform is Windows NT 4.0 Server, Enterprise Edition. Microsoft BackOffice components in the system include SQL Server 6.5 with Service Pack 5A, Microsoft Transaction Server, Microsoft Message Queue and Microsoft Cluster Service. Eventually systems managers will swap in SQL Server 7.0 as the database server.

Hardware includes four-way Unisys Aquanta servers and two-way Dell Precision 610 servers. Micro Modeling Associates (www.micromodeling.com) developed the system, then partnered with Unisys Corp. for a proof-of-concept benchmark.