Banks Trial Arcontech’s CityVision for Linux

25/10/2010

London, 25th October 2010.  Arcontech, the real-time market data technology specialist has today announced the Linux version of its CityVision market data distribution and vendor contribution platform.  The new version has completed rigorous internal tests and is currently being installed for user acceptance testing.

The latest CityVision version recognises market demand for Linux, particularly from North America and in larger investment banks where Microsoft Windows is not popular in server rooms and Solaris is not seen as a strategic operating system.

As with the Solaris version released last year, Arcontech’s innovative use of its own real-time micro kernel has enabled re-use of the proven code base of the CityVision for Microsoft Windows™ and CityVision for Solaris™ versions by providing an abstraction layer from the underlying operating system. This approach reduces both the effort required and the risk of introducing programming errors, since core logic does not need to be reworked.

Interoperability between all three operating system versions has been ensured meaning that migration is simple and can be achieved without system downtime. This is due to CityVision’s fully dynamic hot-standby feature, where parts of the resilient system are taken off-line and upgraded to a new operating system while the other parts continue to service the load. Once re-synchronised, the other parts are upgraded similarly.

Performance also benefits from micro-kernel software engineering.  According to Andrew Miller, CEO of Arcontech, “Taking full advantage of multi-threading and multi-processing capabilities of Linux together with modern multi-core processors, we are seeing exceptional throughput and reduced latency, even in virtualised environments. This is important with the ever increasing fully-loaded cost of CPUs; CityVision users can get better performance with fewer boxes.”

The Linux version of CityVision can, of course, be co-located with existing Linux systems.  This can further reduce hardware requirements and the need for additional operating system skills and resource within market data service departments.

Andrew Miller added: “We’re seeing strong interest in Linux deployments with several new contracts dependent on its availability.  This is another example of us staying ahead of the competition in terms of features, reliability, availability and flexibility.”