Financial Times

MIT's share trading system fails again
Millennium IT, the suppliers of software for the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) automated trading system, will be "held responsible" if there are future failures that disrupts share trading, CSE Director General Hiran Mendis said. Mendis said Millennium IT will build more fault tolerance software into the ATS to avoid glitches in the future.

He was speaking at a news conference held to explain the latest failure in the automated trading system (ATS) of the Colombo bourse. The system collapsed again last Thursday, where trading was halted till 11.30 am and Mendis blamed it on a slip in the 'trip switch' and a hitch in the ATS software.

"MIT will be held responsible if there are any more problems," Mendis said. He said there had been numerous problems with ATS version three, which he called the "worst version", and that he expects up-time to improve with the new version.

However, Mendis did not say what the CSE would do to the contract with MIT if the glitches continue. Mendis said the agreement between MIT and the CSE demands an international standard of 99.6 percent up time at all times in the ATS version four, set up last December. Millennium IT will be accountable for any faults after the one-month settling down period of the system ending in January.

"The system is still settling down and has shown a 92.8 percent up-time till now," he said. Millennium IT will debug the system and continuously supervise it to avoid further malfunction.

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