05/03/2005

Fiorano Software of Silicon Valley, Calif., today announced that Scottrade Inc., an online brokerage firm with more than one million active accounts, has standardized on the Fiorano Enterprise Messaging Server to provide the backbone for its real-time trade processing system.

Fiorano said Scottrade today operates 228 offices nationwide and allows customers to place trades online through its Web site and through ScottradeELITE™ for active investors. Orders are filled within seconds, customer service is swift, and costs are low, the company said. Scottrade offers equities, fixed income, options and more than 9,000 mutual funds - with transactions handled in real time. Every trade executed through Scottrade travels through the company’s data centers, Fiorano said.

Fiorano explained that trading systems require a vast amount of hardware and applications and there often isn’t much standardization between components. Scottrade’s real-time trade processing system runs on an IBM iSeries mainframe coupled with Dell PowerEdge servers. Applications are written in Linux, Unix, Java, and C++. Initially, Scottrade looked at a Java multicast strategy to connect these elements, but it soon became clear that to achieve its demanding throughput and availability objectives, Scottrade needed something more sophisticated with massive scalability, Fiorano said.

“Customers are committing money in real-time, so we needed high levels of reliability. Rapid movement in stock prices means that even miniscule delays are significant,” said Jeff Polsgrove, Chief Information Officer at Scottrade. “We did not want to compromise on speed and scalability.”

Fiorano said that MQ's High Availability (HA) feature was a major factor it Scottrade's choice. It gave Scottrade’s infrastructure the highest fault tolerance capability, ensuring that servers continue to operate during intermittent network or machine failures. Unlike other solutions, Fiorano offers a software-only state replication technique that enables enterprises to enjoy HA without requiring additional investments in hardware. The cost of implementation is substantially lower than competing solutions.

Among the FioranoMQ features Scottrade uses is the administrative API (Application Programming Interface) that allows the company to customize the application to the company’s specific needs. “Using the product’s Web interface, we were able to make a new screen for our programming staff that offered a select feature set,” Polsgrove said. “That simplified the alternatives for developers and reduced the chance of errors. In addition, Fiorano technical support has also been exceptional. Fiorano provides us with premium 24x7 support and their team is always available when we need them.”

Last fall, Scottrade was awarded the J.D. Power award for Highest in Investor Satisfaction. Among the prime factors influencing customer opinions were trade execution and Web site capability.

“FioranoMQ has performed exceptionally well for us,” Polsgrove said. “We continue to roll out new trading features that depend on FioranoMQ, including a new Web site front-end tool that notifies our customers when a trade is executed. Fiorano has helped us compete confidently in this market.”