NetworkWorld: NASDAQ Survived Disaster Due to Good Planning
NetworkWorld has published an excellent article about the NASDAQ and its success in surviving the terrorist incidents in Manhattan. The article talks about the crisis handling procedure that was in place, which included a crisis management hotline that was printed on wallet cards carried by all employees.
The article also includes a description of the network infrastructure that NASDAQ has in place. It includes a Unisys mainframe capable of producing 2,000 quotes per second. The mainframe is connected to a network of 60 Tandem servers containing a total of 800 processors. The Tandems provide auto-execution, negotiation, and trade reporting. There is also a data warehouse for regulatory and investigative purposes consisting of a Sequent server running a derivative of BSD and a 20 to 50 terabyte Oracle database.