Vol 7 No 7
CONNECTIVITY
Bear, Stearns & Co. Opts for Aegis Software’s Simulators
NEW YORK--Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc. is using Aegis Software for the testing and verification of its trading systems and volume-weighted average pricing (VWAP) engines, Aegis officials say.
The firm will be using the "Exchange Simulator" and "Client Simulator" applications for the systems of its Global FIX Connectivity Group.
The Aegis applications have been deployed at Bear, Stearns’ Chicago and Parsippany, N.J. facilities, according to Norm Friedman, vice president for Aegis. "It’s a totally self-contained environment," Friedman says of the simulation software.
Users can test software against simulated exchange and client interactions. Through the use of Aegis’ graphical user interface (GUI), firms can see the performance of their systems. The software also allows users to drill down to the messages from the interactions and search through test results.
The Exchange Simulator offering is aimed at developers, quality assurance (QA) engineers and production support departments to help user firms verify transaction systems with exchanges and ECNs. It is used for functional, regression, conformance and load testing. The Exchange Simulator can recreate the environments of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the American Stock Exchange (Amex), Archipelago Exchange (ArcaEx), and Instinet (including Island).
Users can exploit Client Simulator to mimic FIX connections for customer environments. It has an interface for testing transactions from a client’s point of view, and can be used for a virtual order entry interface.
The Client Simulator helps users trace transactions and their accompanying FIX messages from start to finish. For the sell side, the Client Simulator recreates the activity of buy-side clients in order to test inbound equities or options as well as FIX and the NYSE CMS order flow against the sell-side trading system.
Bear, Stearns officials did not respond to inquiries by press time.
Eugene Grygo
