Maintenance and Enhancement of a Complicated Foreign Exchange System

The client

This is a leading international investment company headquartered in London, which provides investment advice and fundamental strategy to the world's leading money-centre banks such as Citigroup, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, CIBC, Wells Fargo and others, focusing on foreign exchange, stocks and interest rate derivatives. The company, in 2001, was regulated and authorized by the Financial Service Authority and registered as an investment advisor with the SEC.

What the client wanted

There existed a real-time foreign exchange analysis system in the company, which offered its customers 7x 24' s system analytical services through the Internet. The system was able to intuitively present the track and trend of the market movement in the form of graph gained from the complete and accurate history & real-time market data utilizing the most mature economics theory and technical analysis tools currently.

The analysis system had been still in the process of optimisation and function enhancement after several years' development. The client wished to look for an offshore company to take over the system and provide support services to his customers during the China 's work time, and furthermore to develop new functionalities in the future.

Approach

With Abstract Technology's project manager going to London to perform the onshore knowledge transition with the client, Abstract Technology quickly and smoothly took over the system. Abstract Technology afterwards became the first-line support for the system during Abstract Technology's normal hours by setting up an Offshore Development Center (ODC) for the client in charge of the whole system's maintenance, functional enhancement and customer support work.

The offshore team from Abstract Technology provided two kinds of technical services to the system. One was the technical support service with long-term and persistent dedicated engineers; the other was software development service which covered short-term and temporary requested service with unfixed staffs.

The foreign exchange analysis system was a complicated system developed using multiple technologies. The most parts of the system were built on Java-based technologies with Apache as the web server, Web Logic as the middle tier and Sybase as the database, and some C/C++ programs were compiled to collect data from the five data providers. Abstract Technology was responsible for the maintenance of the system's 14 servers involving 2 entrance servers, 4 testing servers and 8 production servers, and moreover in charge of the database maintenance. There were many unused files needed to be clean as well as some unfinished and not well-organized documents to be reformed in the system.

Throughout the whole process, Abstract Technology kept effective communication with the client as well as kept close watch on any change or issue that might impact the system and handled it promptly and effectively. The related documents and reports were provided to keep the client updated with the development process.

Some enhancement was also implemented like the localisation to the system. Depending on the accumulated experience in localisation, Abstract Technology's engineers quickly and excellently completed the development. Furthermore, according to the client, our developers compiled some new C programs to read data from a new data provider after greatly comprehending the data contribution methods.

Benefits

• The model of ODC Abstract Technology provided guaranteed the extension of the client's development environment and resources.
• The maintenance and enhancement made the system more stable and efficient.
• Agile troubleshooting response and quick enhancement from offshore enabled the client to rapidly strengthen its technical competence.

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