NSE may look to move more operations to the cloud

Mumbai: NSE may look to move more parts of its technology infrastructure to the cloud, a top official said. The stock exchange currently uses largely on-premise systems but would look to move operations to the cloud in the future to improve speed, especially during disaster recovery sessions.

In a chat with ET GM Shenoy, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at NSE said, “As of now exchanges are more on premise – doesn’t mean we don’t use the cloud. We have started on our cloud journey. The ancillary systems, not the core ones have been moved to the cloud. Our email system is in the Microsoft Azure Cloud and our website is on the cloud…. The idealistic scenario would be when we are able to an auto switchover to the disaster recovery site. Somewhere along the line when we move to a totally cloud environment …the switchover could happen in minutes rather than hours.”

In line with SEBI requirements, the exchange conducts a two-day live operation from its disaster recovery site once every six months. There are two aspects to the recovery, said Shenoy.

“There is the RPO and RTO. RPO is how much of data you will lose if there is a disaster or how much data you are allowed to lose, RTO is how much time following a disaster the NSE will be up and running again,” he said. According to SEBI requirements, RTO is four hours and RPO is half an hour.

The exchange is currently using IT service provider IBM to automate the transfer of operations to the disaster site. Earlier the switchover was done manually and took a few hours to complete and with automation, the time taken has reduced by 80% he said.

The exchange is looking to implement more emerging technology to further streamline its operations, he said, “For any exchange it’s a nightmare to have an outage – it’s a problem of cost and reputation so no one wants to economize on planning for such an event. Any cutting edge technology in the market we are ready to try out.”

The exchange was earlier penalized by SEBI on charges by a whistleblower that few high-frequency traders/brokers were being given preferential access to its servers and that the exchange was allowing these traders to place their servers in NSE premises that benefited both parties at the cost of others.

The proceedings are pending before the Securities Appellate Tribunal.