[H-GEN] London Stock Exchange update.

Simon Ellis ellis777 at bigpond.net.au
Mon Oct 5 22:56:56 EDT 2009


Hello everyone.

While browsing I found this update to the London Stock Exchange saga.

http://www.ibspublishing.com/index.cfm?section=news&action=view&id=13440

A good move.
One point of interest is the "trading speed" of  the existing MS dot Net 
based system of 2.7 ms versus the Linux-based system of 0.4 ms. This 
brings to mind other stories of embedded MS Windows in control systems, 
particularly cars, which have high switching times, are too slow to 
respond and cause problems.

Also, the London Stock Exchange buys a company with a superior product 
for less than half the cost of  the current product.

It's fascinating to watch organisations change as management changes. 
Often new management takes the organisation in a different direction, 
primarily to leave their mark. They bring in management consultants and 
accept their advice. Often the management consultants do not have a real 
understanding of the organisation or what it does. They seem to be 
primarily "textbook" based.

They cut expenses, reduce the permanent workforce, employ more 
contractors, outsource as much as they can and move on, leaving the 
problems for someone else. Very often the quality of the products or 
services go down and  management expenses go up. In some cases the 
company actually closes down.

The other part of the cycle is when people realise the mistake and start 
thinking about what the organisation actually does and what resources 
(people) are available. They start bringing things back in house to 
maintain quality and control and reduce some of the expensive, 
non-productive upper management.

In the Linux world, one company that comes to mind is Mandriva Linux 
which was nearly wiped out when Consultants were brought in and their 
advice was followed. Thankfully the new management was removed , some of 
the changes reversed and the company was saved. It was very close though.


Regards,
Simon Ellis.




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