Hear hear
Having worked on a project that is very close to the LSE's new trading platform I would have to agree with most of Dominic's views.
Accenture have to ability to convince senior executives that they know what they are doing because of their branding this forcing unnecessary hires for testing, support and development staff with little or no experience. Moreover, Accenture insisted on using .Net to develop most of the feed handlers. This made it easier to find developers but also had the effect of reducing performance and also blighting the order matching system with .Net garbage collection issues. Yes I know the system is supposed to be horizontally scalable but what’s the point if you can’t scale up since your non-horizontally scalable parts won’t for huge cost. Fortunately the LSE has been severing ties with Accenture over the last 2 or 3 years although this has just meant buying back staff from Accenture they had previously sold to them.
I must admit I never met Ms Furse during my stint at the LSE. Nevertheless, it seems a touch arrogant for her to appear to ignore competition from the likes of Turqoise and Chi-X. Looking at the share price now, perhaps a takeover back in 2005/6 might not have been a bad idea?
One slight error Dominic is that the LSE’s primary site is not at St Paul’s. The two main data centres are elsewhere with the St Paul’s acting as part of a Quorum.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
