METRIQ Inc. - Project Profile #4

Tech Briefs
	Institutional equities trading desk

	Computer room showing application and Novell servers

	Computer room showing Pyramid Oracle SQL servers

	Synoptics fibre ethernet concentrators

PROFILE #4: Implementation of Trading Operations
for Canadian Investment Brokerage:

THE CLIENT:
A national Canadian investment brokerage firm, specializing in the trading of institutional equities and fixed income, research, corporate finance and back office clearing facilities.

THE ENVIRONMENT:
A busy trading operation supported by a multi-platform environment. The trading departments connected to all the major Canadian exchanges, utilizing real-time quotations and analytics.

The back office used an IBM AS/400 for clearing operations connected to ISM. Voice telecommunications facilitated by TIE trader turrets and a Nortel ST PBX. A Datapac X.25 Wide-Area network provided inter-branch data communications with local area networks based on Novell Netware, Sun Solaris and several Oracle database applications.

THE ROLE:
Duncan McAllister was retained as a technical project manager and was instrumental in establishing the communications and computer services group. Over a five year period, oversaw the implementation of computerized trading facilities and telecommunications for their Toronto, Montreal, New York and Vancouver offices.

Responsible for evaluating, testing and recommending software applications, hardware, and communications systems, negotiating supplier contracts and, with a small staff, carrying out day-to-day maintenance in a sophisticated environment supported by leading edge technology.