Dell Services today announced the successful completion of a project with Singapore Exchange (SGX) designed to future-proof the technology underpinning its depository business and enhance operating efficiency. The project helped SGX improve the speed of a critical application by up to 100 percent, significantly lowering annual operating costs and better positioning its IT systems to align with future business initiatives.
With a market capitalization of more than US $6 billion, SGX is among the world's largest exchanges and is Asia’s second-largest listed exchange. The exchange already offers the region's longest trading hours and was looking to streamline IT operations and lower cost-per-transaction rates, while better preparing to address future market growth.
After a competitive evaluation process, SGX selected Dell (then Clerity Solutions) to provide end-to-end application modernization services and mainframe re-hosting technology as part of a multi-million USD modernization project. Dell helped migrate SGX's entire mainframe complex, including key applications like clearing and settlement, third-party tools and utilities, and server and storage resources to a flexible open systems environment with minimum customer impact.
Before selecting the mainframe re-hosting solution, SGX evaluated three options: rewriting its mainframe applications; upgrading its mainframe; and re-hosting its applications to a modern, open platform. The exchange opted to re-host its application environment. Mainframe re-hosting offered the most cost-effective solution and involved less risk than rewriting.

As part of the evaluation process, SGX conducted a proof of concept and reference checks with large financial institutions like NYSE Euronext, where Dell had performed similar work.

In addition to Dell Mainframe Re-hosting software, Dell Enterprise COBOL was leveraged in the project to migrate SGX's IBM CICS applications, batch JCL code, COBOL programs and VSAM data intact. This approach avoided costly code changes and enabled SGX clients to continue accessing its systems without reconfiguration.

Deployed in more than 50 countries, Dell Mainframe Re-hosting technology has lowered annual IT operating costs approximately 30 to 70 percent for many organizations, while providing a flexible path forward for mission-critical mainframe application and data investments.

This 15-month project concluded in October, enabling SGX to implement a scalable, industry-standard platform as part of its endeavor to future proof its IT systems. The exchange has now moved to phase two of the project, which will deliver the ability to easily and rapidly facilitate the introduction of new SGX products.

Quotes

“The application modernization services that Dell provided were delivered on time and within budget, delivering immense value to our organization. Not only has the project reduced our annual operating costs of this solution by an order of magnitude, but it has also dramatically improved our nightly batch window and we can now process double the workload of the previous environment,” said Bob Caisley, chief information officer, Singapore Exchange.

“Since acquiring Clerity Solutions and Make Technologies, we have been able to quickly build our application modernization offerings to help customers reduce the cost of transitioning business-critical applications and data from legacy computing systems to cloud infrastructure and open, standards-based platforms. Today, we have the expertise, solutions, and services to help customers like SGX migrate from a decade old legacy application to a modern and more robust framework,” said Mark Bilger, vice president and chief technology officer, Dell Services.