RTS

RTS REALTIME SYSTEMS GROUP

Our road to becoming the top provider of professional IT services in the financial industry – Summary for 2011, Plans for 2012

Business Line IT Operations – RTS Realtime Systems

RTS REALTIME SYSTEMS GROUP 2

RTS Realtime Systems Mission and Vision

RTS MissionOur Mission is to design and deliver excellent value-

added solutions to our customers.

RTS VisionOur Vision is to become the recognized industry leader

providing innovative technology solutions to elite financial institutions by 2012.


RTS Realtime Systems Strategic Imperative

RTS’ Strategic ImperativeBe …

… the recognized leader in delivering low-latency, high-intelligence, reliable and excellent value solutions to top-tier financial market participants on a global basis.

… present in every major financial institution around the globe.

…the most profitable and highest-earning ISV within 5 years.


What does this mean for the Business Line IT Ops?

Important questions for us are:

What does this mean for us?

How can we contribute to accomplish these goals?As a team

As an individual



Let‘s disect the RTS mission, vision and imperative

Make it simple … how do we as RTS make money and what services do we provide

We develop and sell software

We maintain the software that we have sold and up sell to existing customers

We provide hosting services and support for trading infrastructures/environments in our global datacenters and in customer environments

So ... Which of those areas can we impact directly?...



Turn services provided by IT Ops into revenue

Currently IT-Ops and the global datacenters are viewed as a cost center. We need to change this!

Take a look at the competitive landscape when viewing IT-Ops as an own entity … a separate business and service line to RTS … Who are our competitors??

… amongst others



Understanding the competition is key to success:

What do they do differently?

How are they making money?

Let’s look at the Interactive Data 7Ticks example … They offer:Direct Market Access

Co-Location Services

Managed Services for Ultra-Low latency

Performance MonitoringNetwork Operations Center

FIX Message Analysis

Live Documentation

Transaction Analysis

Service Level Agreements

Consulting

Now … how is this different from what we can do??



We can do it all but do they...

Sell it better …

Present/market it better …

Do it better … or maybe do it smarter?


Differences between RTS and Interactive Data 7Ticks Services

A vendor neutral approach, helping us to focus on the interests of our clients and keep pace with innovation

Direct connectivity to dozens of global futures and options, equities and FX exchanges and trading venues for multi-asset class and ultra-low latency trading

Proximity and co-location hosting services in Chicago, New York, New Jersey, London, Frankfurt and Tokyo

Ultra-low latency, carrier-grade trading network between proximity sites. Long-haul connections distribute exchange feeds across some of the fastest available telco paths between sites.

Additional access to 450 global data sources via the PlusFeed consolidated feed at each hosting center, as well as an array of ultra-low latency direct exchange connections

Innovative 24x7 real-time network monitoring system designed to analyze financial exchange connectivity, network latency, and server and switch performance across the stack

FIX message analysis, including step-by-step detail on transactional latency

Measurement for time of travel for all orders sent across Interactive Data 7ticks networks via select trading platforms

Experienced and responsive support engineers available via phone and e-mail

Personalized consulting services designed to assist with complex project management, research and design, existing electronic trading system infrastructure reviews, network capacity and utilization reports, network performance assessment and tuning, and network risk analysis


What do we need to change to close the gap

Looking at the differences we can close the gap with strategic changes and offer the same and better services!

Analyze the day to day operational procedures and improve efficiency and increase automation where ever possible

Implement useful tools that can, if needed, be extended towards customers to increase transparency and provide realtime information

Set realistic and highest goals to achieve service excellence

Market and sell these services to the customer base and the global financial markets

But most important …


What is our end goal for IT Ops business line?

… becoming the top provider of professional IT services in the financial industry

… be the first choice for customers not only because of our software products but also because of our professional IT and hosting services

… contribute significantly to RTS’ revenue and turn IT-Operations from a cost to a revenue center


IT-Operations RTS Realtime System

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RTS REALTIME SYSTEMS GROUP

RTS IT-Operations Goals

Define Strategic Initiatives

Migration to a cost center organization in 2011 and to a profit center in 2012

Empower RTS 2.0 ERP Solution

Enrich and improve our ASP services

Set Goals

Implementing an ASP service catalog & Increase ASP Revenues

New Datacenters

Reduce cost of poor quality

Global standardized procedures

Documentation, deployment manuals and procedures

FOCUS on what’s important

Utilize connectivity, space and power to improve

Improve overall service quality and system knowledge

Performance & Latency in HW & SW

Fine – Tune the organization

Streamline and extend our infrastructure & improving fault tolerance

Deliver a new ERP and Exchange infrastructure

Error & Learn Review meetings

“We”

Job- Rotation / Inter-Office-Employee Exchange

Build team ship with DEV to learn

Training & Education internally

Moved to 2012

Realized in parts but continuous

effort planned for 2012

Set goals were accomplished but increased

focus in 2012 on harmonization of procedures

Mandatory post mortems need to be

established

We are making progress in actually addressing

the root cause of an issue rather than fining a

quick work around

Conceptual idea has been created and

deployment will start in 2011

Continuous efforts in streamlining the

communication and collaboration with DEV

Goal for 2011 will be reached


What have we accomplished in 2011

• Introduction of VisionApp as a central database for all datacenter and customer hosted production, and RTS internal servers

• Elimination of communication overhead in regards to the task assignment towards IT-Operations and transition to a task driven model that fully adapts the usage of Bugzilla

• Harmonization of global IT-Operation work force through the implementations of key meetings and more direct relationship to the regional heads (IT-Ops Steering Committee, Global IT-Operations Call, individual weekly meetings with regional heads


Continuous Struggle and impediments in 2011

• Datacenter projects have been severely delayed from the project design and planning point of view. The actual deployments went without major outages and customer impact.

• Change process towards a more professional streamlined operation is hitting resistance in various areas and needs to be continuously managed. This resulted in the loss of staff (mainly US), requires more management attention and coaching of individuals which didn’t receive the necessary attention and time

• Regional leads have to follow on the management of their teams rather than the hands on work in their respective area


Continuous Struggle and impediments in 2011

• Missing operational process and policies is making a global approach difficult and we even have to increase the focus on this in 2012

• Lack of leadership and direction in Asia Pacific region was making the integration of this unit extremely difficult and only partially successful

• We need to increase our efforts in the automation of our key processes in order to sustain the growth we are experiencing. We have to make it clear that growth in this area is not directly related to additional revenue. We have to properly manage this growth process in order to survive!


Major focus for 2012

• Automation of the majority of our procedures covering hardware and software deployments. Datacenter Management and software configuration through the successful implementation of Puppet. This is the most significant investment (mainly time followed by money) for IT-Operations up to date.

• Creation of a full service catalogue for IT-Operations and factoring of those services to existing and new customers (MPLS, Monitoring, Environment Management, …). Create marketing collateral focusing on these enhanced service and sell to customers/prospects

• Datacenter review. Focus on what we really need and eliminate overhead cost


Major focus for 2012

• Implementation of a true task management system. Bugzilla is a ticketing system and not sufficient to measure our service quality in a professional manner

• Implement a true security policy globally for RTS and document this policy and enforce it in order to maintain a corporate safety net and protect our intellectual property from external access and manage internal access in an easy way and fashion

• Continue to build out our IT-Operations Asia team and establish a fully operational unit that is completely integrated into our global IT-Operations


Limoncelli Test

This test should make it easier to make a basic evaluation of an IT-Operations team. It is useful for team managers, leaders, and members alike. You can also use this test in order to evaluate a team’s or group’s ability to change.

The score doesn't matter as much as attitude: an unwillingness or inability to change is a red flag.

17 team members participated in the test and the entire feedback was collected to determine what the service line will focus on in 2012 in order to improve our services.


Limoncelli Test Analysis

Limoncelli Test Analysis Summary

Questions Yes No % Y % N % T Y % T N Poor 0% - 40% A Public facing practices: 35% 65% Average 41% - 70%1 Are user requests tracked via a ticket system? 14 3 82% 18% Good 71% - 100%2 Are "the 3 empowering policies" defined and published? 4 13 24% 76%3 Does the team record monthly metrics? 0 16 0% 100%B Modern team practices: 38% 62%4 Do you have a "policy and procedure" wiki? 8 8 50% 50%5 Do you have a password safe? 8 9 47% 53%6 Is your team's code kept in a source code control system? 1 15 6% 94%7 Does your team use a bug-tracking system for their own code? 7 8 47% 53%8 In your bugs/tickets, does stability have a higher priority than new features? 9 6 60% 40%9 Does your team write "design docs"? 2 13 13% 87%

10 Do you have a "post-mortem" process? 6 9 40% 60%C Operational practices 56% 44%

11 Does each service have an OpsDoc? 4 13 24% 76%12 Does each service have appropriate monitoring? 10 7 59% 41%13 Do you have a pager rotation schedule? 9 6 60% 40%14 Do you have separate development, QA, and production systems? 12 3 80% 20%15 Do roll-outs to many machines have a "canary process"? 9 6 60% 40%D Automation practices: 49% 51%

16 Do you use configuration management tools like cfengine/puppet/chef? 1 14 7% 93%17 Do automated administration tasks run under role accounts? 11 4 73% 27%18 Do automated processes that generate email only do so when they have something to say? 10 5 67% 33%

E Fleet management practices 23% 77%19 Is there a database of all machines? 12 4 75% 25%20 Is OS installation automated? 3 13 19% 81%21 Can you automatically patch software across your entire fleet? 0 16 0% 100%22 Do you have a hardware refresh policy? 0 15 0% 100%

F We acknowledge that hardware breaks practices 59% 41%23 Can your servers keep operating even if 1 disk dies? 13 2 87% 13%24 Is the network core N+1? 10 2 83% 17%25 Are your backups automated? 8 8 50% 50%26 Are your disaster recovery plans tested periodically? 1 14 7% 93%27 Do machines in your data center have remote power / console access? 12 5 71% 29%G Security practices: 30% 70%

28 Do desktops/laptops/servers run self-updating, silent, anti-malware software? 6 10 38% 63%29 Do you have a written security policy? 1 14 7% 93%30 Do you submit to periodic security audits? 0 16 0% 100%31 Can a user's account be disabled on all systems in 1 hour? 10 6 63% 38%32 Can you change all privileged (root) passwords in 1 hour? 7 9 44% 56%