Success Story

Success Stories

Reuters, Ltd.

Reuters Uses Sun Clusters and Java to Expand Its World-Wide Financial Services Network

Today, Reuters Ltd. supplies the global business community and news media with a wide range of information products, including financial data, transaction and trading room systems, access to numerical and textual historical databases, news, graphics, still photos and news video. Information is obtained from 261 exchanges and over-the-counter markets, subscribers who contribute data directly to Reuters, and from a network of about 1,975 journalists, photographers and cameramen.

Reuters' move to being a network-based electronic information provider began in the 1960s. The company established a global private network, which is the second largest in the world, and in the next three decades deployed DECNet, TCP/IP, and proprietary network protocols developed by Reuters, with mainly Digital servers on the back end.

The network reaches 45,000 client sites, which include the trading floors of almost every international investment bank. The portion of the network transmitting real-time financial data was highly optimized to broadcast relatively small amounts of data at very high speed around the world.

"This is ideal for prices and textual data, but is completely unsuitable for richer forms of information, such as graphics, pictures, audio, and video," says David Weller, Technology Manager at Reuters.

Enter the Reuters Web, running clustered Sun Enterprise 4000 servers, SPARCstorage Arrays in a Sun Solaris operating environment.

Extranet with Fast, 24 x 7 Availability

"We saw Sun as the de facto industry platform for offering web services," says David Weller. "We knew we could reach our 99.98% service targets using Sun."

Reuters also determined that running Solaris would give them access to the best third-party applications available, such as the Verity search engine used as the general search engine for content on Reuters Web.

"Reuters was eager to create a flexible mechanism for delivering the particular type of data we believe complement the trading products: pseudo real-time data, data in paginated form, and a wealth of graphical and pictorial information such as annual reports," says Les Clemenson, Director of Network Technology at Reuters.

Three clusters of Sun Enterprise 4000 servers were installed in London and one cluster was installed at Reuters offices in Philadelphia. One server cluster in London is dedicated to Reuters' search engine. The other servers contain static content on companies, commodities, and financial instruments.

Reuters Web network engineers and administrators utilize Solstice Domain Manager software from Sun because it offers the full range of monitoring capabilities. Solstice Domain Manager gives Reuters network engineers superior event management with event-based actions and open automanagement; trap priorities; cooperative consoles enhancements; and other functions helpful in managing such a massive, internationally deployed network.

Users access the Reuters Web via a Netscape browser. Although Reuters and Sun have a long established partnership in trading rooms around the world, this is the first time that Sun's high-end server platform has been used within Reuters' own enterprise.

Java Used for Dynamic Applications

Other Java applications enable users to perform electronic trades from their Reuters Web browsers. Java is enabling new and evolving applications on Reuters Web, including:

• Communications among traders -- Java applets embedded in browsers provide facilities for electronic trading and targeted notifications of new financial information.

• Publishing to the Reuters Web -- Reuters staff, research firms, analysts, and brokers can publish reports and data directly to the Reuters Web utilizing easy-to-use Java application tools.

• Desktop software upgrades -- Java enables the code for PC and UNIX-based workstation applications to be downloaded from the Web server and interpreted on the workstation when the applet is launched on a Web page. It does not need to be installed on the workstation. Each time that applet is retrieved by a user, the user gets the most recent version of the code. This means that new products can be introduced instantaneously and changes to existing products can be made on the fly; a facility that Reuters is aiming for in the next year.

Today, Sun Enterprise Cluster servers underlie Reuters' goal to deliver information to customers on 395,000 TCP/IP-enabled clients (PCs, workstations, terminals) in 161 countries. The company sees the web platform supporting key areas of new services, which will take increasing advantage of Java capabilities. Web-based projects are in progress throughout Reuters, and these are perceived as a way of unlocking the creativity of marketing and product development staff in domestic and international markets who are closest to customer needs and wish lists.