BoNY Outsources Data Support

The Bank of New York has signed a three-year deal to outsource support of its global market data infrastructure to New York-based data design and support provider West Highland Support Services, says West Highland's chief executive Steven Roe.

Roe declines to discuss the financial arrangements of the deal but describes it as "a substantial commitment on their part."

West Highland will be responsible for 24/6 support, covering all software upgrades, maintenance, and software and hardware support of BoNY's market data systems in New York, London and Asia, as well as the bank's disaster recovery facility in New Jersey. It has responsibility for providing service metrics, reporting, and ensuring that providers deliver on service-level agreements.

West Highland has been providing limited support to BoNY for the past two years, Roe says, and it was based on this relationship that the bank embarked on an expanded deal. Previously, he says, the company provided support for the bank's New York operations only. "We didn't have responsibility for a problem if it came from outside that area—for example, if someone in the UK had a problem," Roe says. "Now, if anyone anywhere in the world has a problem, we can notify them and fix it."

The company will now support BoNY's RMDS infrastructure, which runs on Sun Microsystems servers; internal data applications; Bloomberg terminals; and BlackBerry servers that run the firm's wireless market data service.

But the new agreement also involves covering exchange servers, firewall access and switches, Roe says. Examples of the problems routinely faced could include data latency issues, server failures, outages of service or telecom providers, and problems with Reuters' DACS permissioning and reconciliation system.

"One of their objectives was to increase the level of support and to reduce their costs," Roe says. "To man a support function in-house with all the disciplines they need would be very expensive."

He says West Highland hires people with experience of specific platforms as well as general issues such as networking and operating systems, and trains them in other platforms to ensure the most value for customers.

Roe says that the big difference between supporting data using West Highland and supporting it in-house is that West Highland constantly monitors and reports on systems. In contrast, the first that a firm's technology team might know about a problem would be when traders call them complaining that they are not receiving data.

Once a problem is identified, West Highland can generally fix any problem remotely without having to visit a customer site, Roe says. "We have direct VPN connections to all of our client accounts, so we can get access to machines by opening network ports to perform certain functions…. The only things we can't fix remotely are hardware problems."

BoNY officials did not return calls for comment by press time.