Wall Street goes Linux

IBM outshines Sun with Stock Exchange deal...

IBM has won the contract to transfer crucial parts of the New York Stock Exchange's computer systems to Linux. The NYSE's Artmail system, which reports transactions to stockbrokers and member companies, previously ran on 180 Sparc servers from Sun Microsystems. The system handles up to 20 million transactions a day. Artmail has been ported from the Sun servers to an IBM eServer zSeries Mainframe running Linux virtual servers. This is the most significant contract win for Linux, the free operating system which has been championed by IBM as a cheap alternative to proprietary UNIX operating systems like Sun's Solaris. The financial services industry is traditionally one of the most conservative in its IT strategy, with every minute of downtime costing millions of dollars. So the NYSE's decision to opt for Linux is a major boost to IBM's server strategy.