Wall Street brokerage firm AB Watley is to port its online trading systems from Windows NT to a network of Sun Enterprise 4500 servers, citing cost savings, reliability and scalability.
"When we considered how we could improve our product offerings and serve our customers more efficiently, the hardware platform choice was critical," explains Leon Ferguson, CIO at AB Watley. "The reliability, scalability and system manageability of Sun's technology allows us to meet our goal of providing the highest quality trading technology and service in the industry at a low cost."
The Sun system migration will consolidate over 200 NT servers to fewer than 20 Sun servers. Steve Katzman, global industry manager of securities and capital markets for Sun Microsystems says the switch will help the broker handle rapidly growing online volumes and support industry advances such as decimalisation and shorter settlement timeframes.
By early July, AB Watley expects to have converted the majority of its users to the new system, with the remaining users scheduled to go online in early September.