Logica Plc has acquired exclusive marketing rights to the Teknekron Trading System in the UK, Holland, Sweden, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as non-exclusive rights in the Far East. The system comes from Teknekron Software Systems Inc, a 22-year-old company with turnover of $250m. It is a member of the OSI/Network Management Forum, which is attempting to speed up the implementation of Open Systems Interconnection in the face of proprietary opposition from DEC and IBM (CI No 1,183). The digital trading system runs under Unix on several systems, including workstations from Hewlett-Packard, Sun, and IBM’s RTs. The heart of the system is the Teknekron Information Bus, which provides a common interface to different equipment, and acts as a channel that enables various trading applications and market data systems to talk to each other. Low cost personal computers to high-end servers can be linked in the same installation. After the information has been integrated, it can be viewed in a variety of ways, including reports and real-time graphics, and layouts can be individually tailored or standardised. Logica says that the distributed architecture enables applications to run on any processor, and that this eliminates the need to have spare capacity for back-up. Teknekron uses a a standard Ethernet network, and TCP/IP communications. Graphics facilities include PHIGS, GKS, and Core, and it will soon have Presentation Manager in addition to the X Window. Data exchange is via X400 and X500, and the database is SQL-based. Logica expects to install Teknekron in dealing rooms with over 40 positions, and says that the market is worth a potential UKP20m per annum.
