Platform Modernization –
A Case Study
April 1, 2010
2010© Symphony Services Corp. and Misys Plc | Proprietary & Confidential
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Contents
Platform Modernization
 Background
 Business Drivers
 Short and Long-term Goals
 Technical Challenges and Proposed Solutions
 Work Done-to-date
 Lessons Learned
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2010© Symphony Services Corp. and Misys Plc | Proprietary & Confidential
Background
 Symphony Services
 Provider of product engineering outsourcing services
 Over 3000 employees serve 150+ customers in multiple countries
 Focus on ISVs, embedded systems, and engineering services
 Misys – Our Client
 Provider of application software and services to the financial services and
healthcare industries
 Over 6,000 employees serve customers in 120 countries
 3 Divisions - Banking, Treasury & Capital Markets (TCM), and Healthcare (Allscripts)
 Symphony has been working with TCM division on modernization of a trading
platform (application) called Summit
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2010© Symphony Services Corp. and Misys Plc | Proprietary & Confidential
Summit
Background
PRINCIPAL FORMULA
FEES
 Summit is a multi-asset class solution for
treasury and capital market participants
 Integrated front-to-back office solution
 Distributed CORBA-based application
developed in C, C++, and .Net.
 Large monolithic application – 12.7 million
LOC
PRINCIPALSCHEDULE
LIBOR 3M EUR/USD EUR/GBP
INDEX 1
 Technology base is becoming outdated
(ex. CORBA)
 Issues with Performance and Scalability
 Desire to modernize Summit to remain
technologically competitive
DIGITAL
BARRIER OPTION 1 OPTION 2
Exotics & Hybrids (MUST)
Fixed
Income
Bonds
STRIKE
Treasury
Derivatives
Lending
Loans &
Interest Rates
Syndicate
Deposits
 Summit has been developed over a
period of 20 years
INDEX 2
MTNs
Loans
Credit
FX
Repos
Bilateral Loans
Currency
MM Securities
MBS/ABS
Equity
GICS
Bond &
Commodity
Trading – Pricing, Trading, P&L, Positions, Hedging
Risk – Market Risk, Credit Risk, VaR, Limits, Collateral
Operations – Workflow, Settlement, Reporting, Accounting
Rules based workflow
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2010© Symphony Services Corp. and Misys Plc | Proprietary & Confidential
Summit Architecture
Problem with Scalability
SummitFT Desktop
HTTP
or HTTPS
External Client
Apps (Java, Excel,
C++, VB, etc)
Web Application
Server
CORBA or SOAP
High memory
footprint & slow
start up
Real Time Servers
Credit,
Hedge
Single point
failure
possibility
Market
Server
Position
Servers
STP
Servers
Distribution
Server
Gateway
Loaders
eToolkit Server
Direct function calls
SummitFT
CORBA Business Objects
BVS
CORBA
Real time External
Feeds
Data Source
Summit
“Classic”
Applications
Financial Toolkit
Metadata layer
Database I/O
Layer
Sybase / Oracle /
SQLServer
Heavy I/O load
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2010© Symphony Services Corp. and Misys Plc | Proprietary & Confidential
Summit Modernization
Business Drivers
Improve user
experience
Reduce Total Cost of
Ownership (TCO)
Improve
interoperability
Enhance performance,
scalability, and reliability
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2010© Symphony Services Corp. and Misys Plc | Proprietary & Confidential
Summit Modernization
Short-term Goals
Short-term Goals
Project Description
Reduce Total cost of
Ownership
Port Summit onto 64-bit Intel platform
Enhance Performance and
Scalability
Load balance STP servers
Server Pooling
Grid enhancements
Cache improvements
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2010© Symphony Services Corp. and Misys Plc | Proprietary & Confidential
Summit Modernization
Long-term Goals
 Componentize Summit
 Make components interoperable
1. Componentize
2. Make components
interoperable –
Leverage SOA
 Performance enhancements
 Eliminate performance problems due to single threaded STK
 Eliminate scalability issues with risk server
 Provide an alternative to distribution server
 Make Summit easy to install and upgrade
Leverage Grid
Computing
Leverage JMS-MoM
 Migrate away from C, C++, CORBA over time
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2010© Symphony Services Corp. and Misys Plc | Proprietary & Confidential
Meeting Long-term Goals
Technical Challenges
Long-term Goals
Challenges
Componentize Summit
STK modules are tightly coupled - single function call
could load and execute over 200 libraries
Make components
interoperable
Data layer is not virtualized – limits interoperability
Summit objects are stateful - can not build stateless
services from stateful objects
CORBA IDL messages are synchronous - can not provide
asynchronous services with synchronous messages
Eliminate performance
problems due to single
threaded STK
System has over 4000 global static variables –limits
multi-threading
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2010© Symphony Services Corp. and Misys Plc | Proprietary & Confidential
Meeting Long-term Goals
Proposed Solutions
Long-term Goals
Challenges
Proposed Solutions
Componentize Summit
STK modules are tightly
coupled - single function call
could load and execute over
200 libraries
Componentize – re-factor code
Make components
interoperable
Data layer is not virtualized –
limits interoperability
Virtualize data layer – re-factor code
Summit objects are stateful can not build stateless
services from stateful objects
Make Summit objects stateless –
caching technology to store state
information
CORBA IDL messages are
synchronous - can not provide
asynchronous services with
synchronous messages
Replace ORBIX – replace IDL calls with
MOM-based asynchronous calls
System has over 4000 global
static variables –limits multithreading
Eliminate/Re-initialize global static
variables
Eliminate performance
problems due to single
threaded STK
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2010© Symphony Services Corp. and Misys Plc | Proprietary & Confidential
Modernization
Short-term vs. Long-term Goals
A balancing act
Short-term Goals
• Reduce Total Cost of Ownership
• Enhance Performance, Scalability
and Reliability
Long-term Goals
• Componentize Summit
• Make components interoperable
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2010© Symphony Services Corp. and Misys Plc | Proprietary & Confidential
Summit Modernization
Meeting Short-term Goals
Completed projects to meet short-term Goals
Short-term Goals
Project Description
Benefits
Reduce Total cost of
Ownership
Port Summit onto 64-bit Intel
platform
3-5 times cheaper compared
to Sparc
Enhance
Performance and
Scalability
Load balance STP servers
Allows Summit to be
scalable – to add more
servers and dynamically load
balance among servers
Server Pooling
eTK server starts up 4-times
faster on Windows and 8times faster on Solaris
Grid enhancements
Trade processing time
reduced by half with 4 grid
engines
Cache improvements – to reduce
load on database
50% improvement in
retrieving bond definitions
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2010© Symphony Services Corp. and Misys Plc | Proprietary & Confidential
Meeting Short-term Goals
Load balancing STP Servers
Summit Applications
Put notifications on queue
Flow Server
Queue
Document
Server
Queue
Trade Server
Queue
Admin Console (JMX)
Message Broker (JMS)
Benefits
• Open-standards
messaging
• Dynamic Load
Balancing
• Scalability
Receive Work Items
STP Trade
Servers
STP Document
Servers
STP Flow
Servers
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2010© Symphony Services Corp. and Misys Plc | Proprietary & Confidential
Meeting Short-term Goals
Grid Enhancements
 Grid enable Summit applications
• Accounting driver
• Historical VAR
– Based on DataSynapse platform
 Optimize existing Summit grid based applications
– Provide more efficient data access for large grids
– Improved trade “batching” algorithm, to use grid more efficiently
– Send slowest jobs to grid first, to reduce overall duration
– Use of binary format to stream data to grid engines
– Use of DataSynapse grid cache (distributed cache) to store temporary data
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2010© Symphony Services Corp. and Misys Plc | Proprietary & Confidential
Meeting short-term Goals
Server Pooling and Caching
 eToolkit Server Pooling
eToolkit Manager manages a list of “free” and “allocated” pool of servers.
“Free” eTK servers
“Allocated” eTK servers
etk.API.connect
etk.API.release
 Internal data cache improvements
– Allow Entity cache to be dynamically activated and resized using an admin
application
– Optimize cache implementation and ensure cache is used internally whenever
possible
– Optimize security cache implementation
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2010© Symphony Services Corp. and Misys Plc | Proprietary & Confidential
Meeting Long-term Goals
 Defined Target Architecture – role of Grid computing and SOA
 Completed SOA POC
 Componentized Financial Tools layer – one of the four STK layers
 Reduction in eToolkit memory footprint - 22 MB compared to 65 MB
 Reduction in eToolkit Server startup time - 2-3 sec compared to 9 -12 sec
 Completed Distributed Caching POC using Memcached (open source)
 Server re-start time is faster by an order of magnitude (7-11 sec compared
to 2 minutes)
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2010© Symphony Services Corp. and Misys Plc | Proprietary & Confidential
Meeting Long-term Goals
Target Architecture - Open Summit
Upstream
Systems
Summit FT
Workstation
Summit
Web Client
Monitoring
& Admin
Other Client
Reporting
Front End
Summit Middle Tier
Gateway
Services
MOM/JMS
Message Oriented Middleware
Services
Downstream
Systems
STP Servers
(Trade/Flow/...)
Pricing/Risk
Engines
Data/Compute Grid
Dynamic load distribution
Position
Servers
FT Business
Objects
Reporting / BI
Engines
Summit Data Store
Operational Database
Datamart
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2010© Symphony Services Corp. and Misys Plc | Proprietary & Confidential
Meeting Long-term Goals
Interoperability via SOA
Goal: Simpler integration of Summit with other systems; seamless integration with other
Misys products
Solutions
•
Make Summit business objects available as Services
•
Replace Orbix with JMS based Message Oriented Middleware.
Misys SOA Stack
Summit FT
Other Systems
• UI described in XML & mapped to business processes
• Business Process Library described using services
Enterprise Service Bus
Summit Components:
JMS, SOA Grid
Customer
System
Service orchestration,
Policy Management, Security
Opics
RiskVision
CBS
Equation
DATA INTEGRATION LAYER
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2010© Symphony Services Corp. and Misys Plc | Proprietary & Confidential
Meeting Long-term Goals
Lessons Learned
 Gap between current and desired target architecture is large
 Takes more time and effort than planned
 Management commitment in terms of direction and funding is critical
 Plan so that you can incorporate results into product releases on a
regular basis
 Demonstrate benefits to end customers
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2010© Symphony Services Corp. and Misys Plc | Proprietary & Confidential
Thank you
Shankar S. Hegde, Ph.D.
Sr Client Partner & Chief Architect
Symphony Services
1 Technology Park Drive
Westford, MA 01886
978 590 1532
shankar.hegde@symphonysv.com
Ian Southward
Europe Sales and Client Director
Symphony Services
2 Sheen Road
Richmond
TW9 1AE
+44 7827 919422
Ian.Southward@symphonysv.com
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2010© Symphony Services Corp. and Misys Plc | Proprietary & Confidential