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- MTS Technology
- Who are the technology service providers of MTS?
- What is the basic architecture of the MTS wholesale system?
- How do the Euro-MTS and local MTS-platforms interact?
- In what format does the MTS system deliver and receive data?
- If I require further information on MTS Technology, who do I contact?
Answers
Who are the technology service providers of MTS?
The major technology service provider for the MTS wholesale markets is SIA. For BondVision (see www.bondvision.net) , the service providers also include Radianz and Oracle. MTS is currently developing an Internet connectivity to the wholesale markets based on the architecture of BondVision: in such case, the technology service providers for the wholesale markets will also include Radianz and Oracle.
What is the basic architecture of the MTS wholesale system?
The market is based on a three-tiered market architecture including: central trading systems, peripheral trading systems and client workstations. The central trading systems are located in Milan and are connected via a wide area network to the peripheral systems located at the user's site; the peripheral trading systems at the user's site are connected via a local area network to the client workstations.
Central Systems: The central electronic market systems run on SIA's hardware located at SIA's premises in Milan. The central system architecture is composed of:
- Central Trading System - hosted on a Tandem non-stop central server
- Satellite Transmission System (STS) - used to broadcast market information, hosted on HPUnix system
- Pre-Settlement System - running on an IBM host
- Security Server - provides DES based encryption services used to cipher confidential data, such as orders and executions, that are transmitted over the WAN
- System & Network Management Server - provides centralized services including peripheral system management, automatic fault discovery, performance monitoring and fully automated software distribution.
Wide area network: SIA markets use a Frame Relay private network covering most of Europe. There are switching nodes distributed throughout the continent and the UK. In addition to the network nodes installed in Italy, others have been installed in London, Frankfurt, Paris, Amsterdam and Utrecht. A leased CDN line is provided to connect the Frame Relay network node to the Open Server while an ISDN connection is provided for backup purposes.
The communication devices provided by SIA to market members include:
- a wide area network connection, including a modem with a communication line
- two satellite antennas and receivers for broadcasted flow management
- a SWITCH device to support the switch to an ISDN connection in case of system back up (ISDN switched line can be managed directly by Router)
- Router device for multiplexing data flows
Peripheral Systems: As shown in Diagram 1, the SIA LAN and the member's LAN are both at the member's premises. A firewall can be used to prevent unauthorized access to the customer LAN.
The SIA LAN is composed of:
How do the Euro-MTS and local MTS-platforms interact?
Technically, EuroMTS and local MTS markets are all available within one application. The segregation between markets is provided by a concept called "views" which are access-controlled by MTS Operations ensuring only authorised members have the relevant permissions. This means that a member joining any MTS cash market has an enormous cost advantage to joining the second market, because technically no additional software or hardware is required.
There is also a concept of "parallel quotation" between a local market and EuroMTS. This exists to link those bonds in the local market that meet the benchmark criteria for listing on EuroMTS, thus ensuring integrated liquidity for participants accessing both platforms. The advantage for Danish primary dealers, who also access EuroMTS, is that liquidity of Danish benchmark issues potentially reaches a very wide user base potentially boosting volume and international interest.
In what format does the MTS system deliver and receive data?
Data is delivered to applications through the OMI (Open Market Interface) application protocol; OMI is a protocol defined by SIA to let users access any service available through the NAM architecture based on machines called Open Server; connectivity between applications to the Open Server is through a TCP/IP socket.
Since the Telematico system is a completely open architecture, institutions can feed all data information from the system directly to any Front/Back office software by developing the APIs internally or outsourcing the development to a third party software provider.
MTS Market Makers are also able to connect their price engines to the Telematico system (using the OMI protocol) in order to send price data into the market in order to meet the necessary quoting requirements.
Data format and the way data can be sent/received from the Open Server are described into a set of OMI documents available on the web at: http://techinfo.sia.it/.
If I require further information on MTS Technology, who do I contact?
For further information, please contact clientservices@mtsgroup.org
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