The Application Of Information Technology In The Futures Industry

Information technology has been playing pivotal roles in propelling the development of the futures industry. Since the beginning of China's futures industry, large-scale concentrated computerization has been used in various fields including account opening, trading, risk monitoring, bank-futures transaction, and settlement. The security of information systems and stable operations formed the foundation for the futures related operations. Futures information system is considered as the life-line by futures companies, and is listed as the one of the core competitiveness of futures companies. The introduction of information technologies and their development contributed to the leap-forward development of the futures market. Meanwhile, the rapid development of the futures industry also requires the continued improvement and innovation of information technologies, thus matching the development of the industry. This thesis, from a practical perspective, discusses the application of information technology in the futures industry in terms of three aspects including network and security system, futures trading system, and disaster recovery system. This thesis summarized some pervalent problems in futures information systems: first, the network structures are simplistic, with out-dated security measures; second, the architecture, performance, processing power, and functionalities of the architecture of the trading systems cannot satisfy the development of the futures industry; third, the disaster recovery systems are inadequate, which makes little guarantee to the continuity and integrity of trading when disaster strikes. To address these problems and current situation, we proposed some solutions and implementation plans.This thesis illustrates the importance of information technologies in futures industry. The rapidly changing nature of futures market makes even a few minutes breakdown considerably costly. Current futures information systems made a late start and lack a solid foundation, but the industry's reliance on information technologies is still high.This thesis further discusses the design and implementation of network and security systems. By analyzing the network and security systems, we proposed, based on actual requirements, specific solutions and implementation plans that aim at solving the widely spread problems. The networks running different tasks are separated physically. They data exchange occurs on a communication platform or a firewall. The application of fault tolerance technologies such as stacking, spanning tree, and PortFast in network systems improved the fault tolerance of the network. Access list control is placed on the routers to the exchanges and banks using predefined security strategy to intercept and control data packets and routing information. Through the analysis of OSPF and EIGRP, considering the actual condition of network systems of futures companies, we chose EIGRP to build the company's wide area network. The communication to the exchanges, banks, and the internet is enabled by cables from two providers, ensuring the connectivity in case of the failure of either one of them. At the boundary of the network, through the configuration of intrusion detection systems and vulnerability scanning system, the security of the whole network is improved. The network and security monitoring systems are built in order to monitor all equipment status including connectivity, packet loss rate, CPU usage, memory usage, bandwidth usage, etc.The design and implementation of futures trading system address widely spread problems by analyzing its current usage. The software part of the trading system is divided into four layers: data layer (database), application layer (application server), communication layer (communication platform), presentation layer (client-side). The hardware part includes: trading database servers, trading application servers (cluster), communication servers (cluster), and centralized client termimals. Apart from presentation layer, they all use clustering technologies which improves the system security and stability. Load testing experiment showed that our futures trading system can handle 220 transactions/sec, 100 million transactions/day, and support 10,000 parallel clients which totals to 100,000. This can satisfy our current need and the expansion in the foreseeable future.Lastly, we designed a disaster recovery system for the futures trading system. Currently, the entire industry is using large-scale centralized trading. In event of central server failure, none of the client transactions can be handled, resulting in huge loss to the clients and the company. This part of the thesis gives insight in the principles, construction mode, implementation procedures, data synchronization, and final implementation of disaster recovery center. Disaster recovery system should be located in a different city at least 100km away from the production center. The duplication of the trading system needs to be built with unobstructed communication and 50% performance of the main center using the same trading system. It should synchronize the data with the main trading system so that when the main trading system breaks down, the disaster recovery system can immediately be put into production. When the switch is done, the client can logon again and continue trading. However, the trade monitoring system cannot be used, and the client cannot query the transaction history. Conditional order system and bank-futures transaction are also suspended.