Financial firms in Europe were left without key data on
market prices for 10 hours last week because of a power failure in
one of Reuters' datacentres.
The Reuters data-feed, which is used by firms to automatically
update their own prices, went down at about 2.30pm and was restored
at midnight on 12 October.
In a statement, the news and information provider said a power
outage at its Docklands Technical Centre caused disruption to
services, specifically its IDN-based information services in
Europe.
"Customers globally may have lost access to European end-of-day
data and foreign exchange transactional capabilities," it said.
"Reuters is working with customers to recover any outstanding
services not available."
A spokesman from Reuters would not comment on its disaster recovery
arrangements.
Daniel Mayo, lead analyst in the financial services practice at
analyst firm Datamonitor, said he was surprised that Reuters did
not have the back-up procedures to prevent a power outage causing
severe disruption to one of its main services.
"Ideally, if one datacentre goes down everything should be shifted
to another site at another location," he said. "This should take
about 10 minutes rather than 10 hours."
Mayo predicted that future corporate governance regulations would
require financial firms to check that suppliers of key information
services have adequate back-up procedures.