The London Stock Exchange has chosen to build its own
platform to link up its core systems, rather than buy commercial
middleware.
The LSE ran a complete review of commercial middleware platforms
but decided to build its own "IB45" middleware using the Microsoft
C# programming language and .net framework, instead of buying
off-the-shelf middleware, said chief technology officer Robin
Paine.
The IBus middleware platform "is the technological heart of
everything we are doing," he said.
The platform is engineered to support high-speed message
dissemination and has been designed to scale up and down to cope
with varying demands in trading volume.
Ian Charlesworth, senior analyst at Ovum, said internal IT
departments had long been the biggest competitor of integration
suppliers such as webMethods and Tibco. "Now, through a combination
of standards and improved tooling, building your own middleware
platform has never been easier," he said.
He pointed out that even though development of custom middleware
was easier, management and maintenance of homegrown solutions could
be a significant burden.
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