JSE back on track

By Candice Jones, ITWeb online telecoms editor

Johannesburg, 17 Feb 2009

Systems governing the publication of the Johannesburg Securities Exchange's (JSE's) major indices are up and running this morning.

The JSE yesterday could not publish real-time information on the activity of the indices, after a connectivity problem between the exchange and the indexing business, the FTSE Group.

“FTSE has been aware of the dissemination issue throughout the day, and has been working closely with JSE,” explained FTSE in a statement.

According to the statement, the company had trouble with distributing real-time information about Johannesburg's main indices through its Global Distribution Service (GDS), to which the JSE subscribes.

While the market information could not be published, the FTSE says it received, indexed and calculated all the movement on yesterday's boards. FTSE distributed yesterday's closing figures a few hours after the actual market closed.

The JSE was not the only entity affected. According to the FTSE statement, several clients were prevented from viewing their information in real-time. It is unclear how many and which clients other than the JSE were affected by the connectivity downtime.

FTSE apologised to clients and JSE market users last night, saying it is working to ensure the same problem does not happen again today. The company has managed the JSE's real-time indexing and publication of the main indices since May 2002.

Just a hitch

This seems to be the first real technical trouble to hit the FTSE's GDS system since it started in 2004.

According to the GDS technical specification document, published in 2004, clients link to a meshed redundant backbone through a doubled Internet connection. Data is passed to and from the FSTE software that allows real-time indexing of the various markets.

The document stipulates that connectivity must be redundant, and suggests backup links should be provided to and from clients like the JSE.

The document also notes that all connectivity needs to be maintained by the client. In the case of yesterday's problem, the downed link came from the side of the FTSE. For a full look at how the system works, download the specification document here.

Not the first

The Johannesburg exchange has been plagued by a spate of technical issues and yesterday's trouble is the third problem in less than a year. However, the connectivity issue between FTSE and the JSE was relatively minor.

In September last year, the local bourse went offline because of a computer problem in London. The JSE's trading system is hosted in London, and the problem left trading crippled for almost an entire day.

Another problem hit the exchange in July last year, when a fault hit one of the bourse's switches, bringing down the JSE's network for six hours. The network error reportedly cost the JSE around R7 billion in trade that day.

The JSE does an average of R8 billion to R12 billion in trade a day, excluding trader takings.