2015 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved. TMC Bonds: Reducing Financial Trading Platform Outages with SAP ASE Cluster Edition To keep exchanges and customer applications running, TMC Bonds implemented SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise Cluster Edition (SAP ASE Cluster Edition) to provide instantaneous failover capabilities in the event of production failures. Potential system recovery has been reduced from an hour to mere seconds per instance, bolstering customer and regulator confidence.
Company TMC Bonds LLC Headquarters New York Industry Banking securities Products and Services Bond trading platform, white label portfolio management applications, and trading and market data Employees 80 90 Web Site www.tmcbonds.com Partner EMC Corporation www.emc.com BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION The company s top objectives Minimize system downtime while managing rapid growth Ensure in-house white label brokerage applications run without interruption Exceed regulators mandates for disaster recovery (DR) and systems high availability (HA) The resolution Developed a multiyear DR and HA plan Deployed SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise Cluster Edition (SAP ASE Cluster Edition) on Red Hat Enterprise Linux to manage several terabytes of data Tested SAP ASE Cluster Edition vigorously on an optimized EMC VMAX storage area network The key benefits Reduced system failover time from up to one hour to just a few seconds per instance Enabled rigorous pretesting of any new software using SAP ASE Cluster Edition s secondary node Gained the ability to forecast the per-second costs of possible outages Read more TOP BENEFITS ACHIEVED As users, our consortium dealer owners understand the financial risks of downtime and the need to invest in a bulletproof system. At TMC, we aim to lead in mission-critical, scalable, and innovative solutions for our diverse client base. David Kovalchick, CTO, TMC Bonds LLC 89% Annual increase in trading volume 4.5 million Core transactions per hour 2 3 sec For system failover, down from up to one hour See more metrics 2 / 6
Minimizing system downtime for superior customer service Founded in 2000, TMC Bonds LLC (TMC) operates a U.S. fixed-income electronic platform. The company has experienced tremendous growth during the past five years and now has more than 500 firms transacting on its system every day. The company currently handles 29% of the interdealer municipal bond market and 12% of the corporate interdealer bond market in the United States, processing 4.5 million updates per hour. As part of its offerings, TMC also markets white label portfolio management applications to its financial services clients, embedding them into customers enterprise systems. In the financial markets and especially trading systems timing is everything. Seconds, let alone minutes or hours, can make the difference between profit and loss. So naturally, TMC s IT department has always made high availability (HA) of its systems a top priority. Plus, with its white label applications so tightly integrated into customers systems, any interruption in TMC service directly affects the businesses of its customers. While TMC had been running its market systems on SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise (SAP ASE) for more than a decade without a catastrophic outage, the firm realized that any downtime would pose a serious problem for both the company and its customers. After the flash crash in 2010, financial regulators responded with strict industry mandates for disaster recovery (DR) and high availability of IT systems. Regulations required TMC to have its disaster recovery site up and running within an hour of failure on its existing system. But in order to stay competitive, TMC knew it needed a system that would provide a much shorter downtime window. 3 / 6
Maximizing system availability with fast disaster recovery When TMC was initially founded, the company hired a consulting firm to develop its in-house exchange platform. But after two years, the platform was still incomplete. So TMC decided to bring the work in-house, moving from its legacy database system to SAP ASE. Although TMC continued to run on SAP ASE successfully for many years without a major downtime event, the company knew it needed to be proactive in establishing a more comprehensive uptime solution. The firm developed a multiyear approach to tackling its HA and DR objectives. TMC quickly discovered that SAP ASE Cluster Edition running on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system could meet its demands for increased service levels. Although there was some trial and error in finding the best storage area network configurations to work with SAP ASE Cluster Edition, TMC eventually selected an EMC VMAX solution to complete its migration. For the initial deployment, TMC entered into a one-year enterprise license agreement that allowed it to create as many databases as it needed. Each SAP ASE Cluster Edition instance one for production and one for DR includes two nodes that ensure instantaneous failover in case of problems. After rigorous testing, the system went live. When TMC decides to install new software releases, the company can also use these secondary nodes as test sites before placing the software into actual production. 4 / 6
Best-in-class performance for customers, prospects, and regulators The adoption of SAP ASE Cluster Edition has allowed TMC to continue growing its business with confidence. System failover time has been reduced from as long as an hour to just a few seconds. This allows both TMC exchanges and customer in-house applications to keep running without interruption. In fact, while the firm used to measure its outage costs by the hour, it can now forecast what a minute or even a second would cost. The new system allows TMC to offer best-in-class service to both its current clients and potential customers while surpassing the high availability mandates of industry regulators. KEY BENEFITS 89% Annual increase in trading volume 4.5 million Core transactions per hour 2 3 seconds For system failover, down from up to one hour 5 / 6
TMC Bonds LLC Further optimizing systems with SAP solutions TMC currently replicates transaction logs from its DR site to its DR center every 15 minutes. To reduce this latency and enable real-time replication, the company installed SAP Replication Server at the end of 2014. TMC continues to rely on SAP to help ensure peak system performance and to support the company s future growth. Based on its satisfaction with the current SAP ASE Cluster Edition deployment, the company will begin testing the newest version of the software as soon as it becomes available. 35864 (15/02) 6 / 6
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