SMX Technology Services Department

The Technology Services Department or TSD covers all matters Information Technology-related
matters in SMX. Headed by the Head of Technology Services, TSD manages data centres,
servers, network routers, switches and applications across two locations - a production
site at our main office at Millenia Tower and our disaster recovery site at Kaki
Bukit.
TSD is comprised of the following teams:
IT Governance
IT Governance personnel own the compliance, internal IT audit, IT risk management
and security management functions within TSD.
Market Services
The Market Services Team runs the Market Services Desk, a single point of contact
for member firms. Beyond the regular functions of a helpdesk, the Market Services
team would also run the incident management, problem management services and is
also in charge of enrolling new member's connectivity into SMX.
Systems and Network Team
The Systems and Network team consists of engineers who maintain the computer systems
and networks in SMX along with facilities they run on. They are responsible for
daily system checks, application start-up and troubleshooting within the IT department.
Support for Corporate IT and data centre operations come under this team as well.
Application Services Team
The Application Services team has ownership over all aspects of matching and clearing
applications. They will cover the start-up, shutdown, backup and verification of
the DOME suite of applications.
SMX Exchange Platform
SMX hosts a state-of-the-art electronic trading platform for trading commodity derivatives
contracts. Orders from buyers and sellers will be routed to the central order book
maintained by the Exchange and stacked in terms of best price and time at which
the order was placed. Matching of the orders will be done electronically by the
matching engine on a price time priority basis. Dealers, brokers and their clients
will be able to connect to the trading platform through multiple forms of connectivity
such as leased lines, dial-up, multi protocol label switching, internet either using
the native front end provided by the Exchange or front ends developed by Independent
Software Vendors(ISVs) .
Connectivity to SMX
Aside from co-location, a member can establish connectivity to SMX Trading Platform
through multiple options, such as MPLS / POINT-TO-POINT / INTERNET-SECURE-VPN.
Below is a summary of each connectivity mode offered by SMX.
- MPLS: Connectivity to the SMX Private trading platform can be established
through Global / Local MPLS solutions. Via this mode of connectivity, the member
is required to establish a private connection between SMX and member sites through
Global / Local MPLS Telco. Members are required to procure one pair of lines to
access SMX Production and DR resources.
Global / Local MPLS connectivity mode key points:
- Member to procure one pair of links and hardware for each member site
- Less susceptible to latency and packet loss because of private connection between
the two sites
- Only multicast is supported, and hence less bandwidth link is required
- SMX manages network hardware devices at SMX and member end
- Failover to backup link (in case of any failure) is completely transparent to member
and no modification is required at member end
- POINT-TO-POINT: Connectivity to SMX Private trading platform can
be established through point-to-point solutions. Via this mode of connectivity,
the member is required to establish a private connection between SMX Production
/ DR and member sites through Telco. Member is required to procure dedicated pair
of lines to access SMX Production and DR resources.
POINT-TO-POINT connectivity mode key points:
- Member to procure dedicated links and hardware for each member site
- Least susceptible to latency and packet loss because of dedicated private connection
between the two sites
- Multicast is supported, and hence less bandwidth link is required
- Member manage network hardware devices at SMX and member end
- Failover to backup link (in case of any failure) require members involvement as
member manage the hardware devices
- INTERNET-VPN: Connectivity to SMX Private trading resources can
be established through Public Internet. In this mode of connectivity, member is
required to establish a secure connection to SMX secure internet gateway over the
public internet, after which member will be able to access trading resources.
Internet-VPN connectivity mode key points:
- No dedicated links or hardware are required to be procured by member for connectivity
- Need least amount of time to establish
- No support for multicast, and hence higher bandwidth link is required
- Susceptible to latency and packet loss due to unreliability of internet cloud
- Member to provide MAC-Address of the PC to establish connection to SMX trading platform
A high-level diagram which shows the SMX infrastructure is as follows:
Contact our Market Services team for further information / clarification:
Phone: +65-6590-3600
Email: market.services@smx.com.sg