Iris Financial Becomes Linux Certified

Hedge fund systems provider Iris Financial says it is no Linux certified. The firm says the certification process was rapid, requiring no code changes, and its applications are now available on Unix and Linux platforms supporting a wide range of

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Hedge fund systems provider Iris Financial says it is no Linux certified. The firm says the certification process was rapid, requiring no code changes, and its applications are now available on Unix and Linux platforms supporting a wide range of user front-ends including .NET, J-Swing and Web Browser clients.

In addition to certification, a number of performance benchmarks were carried out by Iris Financial’s technical teams in London and San Francisco, and independently verified by a premier client running a global FX trading operation. The tests were based on a series of CSA PRICING routines using currency pairs and crosses, and ran on 2 and 4-way processor Linux boxes and equivalent Unix-based configurations.

The Linux benchmark test results showed a significant reduction in the time taken to calculate FX prices on the Linux workstation(s) and saw a welcome reduction in the overall machine load. This level of added performance will provide trading organisations that depend upon timely and coherent price delivery a significant competitive edge and an improved return on investment.

“Iris Financial has been tracking the emergence of the Linux platform for some time due to its increasing acceptance within our client base and the obvious price-performance benefits,” says Steve Colwill, Chief Technical Officer at Iris Financial. “Linux has reached a level of maturity, reliability and support where it is being seriously considered as a viable platform for mission-critical and high-volume trading applications, such as electronic/program trading. The company made a significant technology decision in 1998 to move from a C++ Client/Server platform to design and build the Java/J2EE Component Services Architecture that we now use to build portable, mission-critical applications for global trading institutions. It’s gratifying to see Java’s “Write Once Run Anywhere” promise validated by the ease of certification process we have just completed, where our core test suite ported and ran entirely unmodified. Certifying the CSA on Linux will enable our clients to switch hardware platform and strategies easily and cost-effectively in line with emerging technology and market trends. The CSA’s distributed and fault-tolerant component architecture design makes it ideally suited to distributing system load across a network of low-cost servers, which have in our benchmark testing shown up to a 1:20 price/performance ratio when compared with other server platforms.”

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