SGX securities market temporarily ceased trading as at 1138 hours

[tanjm]

Well, it made the front page of Bloomberg news.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2...ies-market

[cfa]

The handling of announcement by SGX, imo, was very badly managed.

Making 2 announcements of the reopening hours, then not holding up to their commitment and also mentioning the outage was not a "major problem" shows bad handling on the crisis. While it may be normal for outages, the handling of the issue/crisis falls severely short. This is something many organisations have to learn: the handling of a problem and relaying to the public.

CPF board learnt this the hard way in the introduction of the basic sum in 2013 and has improved its communication channels tremendously since. Fast forward to 2016, I am surprised this "communication problem" is still prevalent among Singapore organisations with local roots (both private and public sector).

If they really care about image or reputation , they would not have few system breakdowns with 2 years.

[thinknotleft]

I do not think it is weirdly unrealistic to criticize an Exchange that is aiming to be World Class yet experiences three system issues in 15 months.

I am sure the salaries paid at SGX is comparable to most of the other major stock exchanges so it is fair for the investing community to expect a high level of service quality as well.

3 issues in 15 months may be too much or may be quite good or may be about par with other exchanges. In this case, if you want to criticize reliability, you need to compare with other exchanges or examine SGX's contraints and trading suspension policy.

(1) there is no such thing as "perfect software" or "perfect infrastructure". All software/infra fails. Obviously, if you are bigger and have more money, you can throw money at the problem (e.g. having an entire parallel exchange for testing purposes) to try to reduce the frequency.

(2) statistics can also be biased by reporting. For example, NYSE appears to be remarkably transparent : https://www.nyse.com/market-status/history. If you looked at the list of issues to report, you might have the impression that they have reliability issues quite often. In reality, most people probably don't notice anything.

Did NYSE suspend trading for half day due to IT issue?
Yes, no system is perfect. But does 3 issues in 15 mths suggest higher chances of systematic issues ? If yes, it may be worthwhile to do some review. Its always easier to deal with potential issues before they surface.

Yes, systems may fail. But there's sth called backup system. Not sure if sgx has it.

[BlueKelah]

Maybe sgx kena hack by ah tiong hacking team but dun dare to say..

My broker so happy off early go Lim kopi..

Hope it's online tomorrow.

Sent from my MotoG3 using Tapatalk

[weijian]

I do not think it is weirdly unrealistic to criticize an Exchange that is aiming to be World Class yet experiences three system issues in 15 months.

I am sure the salaries paid at SGX is comparable to most of the other major stock exchanges so it is fair for the investing community to expect a high level of service quality as well.

3 issues in 15 months may be too much or may be quite good or may be about par with other exchanges. In this case, if you want to criticize reliability, you need to compare with other exchanges or examine SGX's contraints and trading suspension policy.

(1) there is no such thing as "perfect software" or "perfect infrastructure". All software/infra fails. Obviously, if you are bigger and have more money, you can throw money at the problem (e.g. having an entire parallel exchange for testing purposes) to try to reduce the frequency.

(2) statistics can also be biased by reporting. For example, NYSE appears to be remarkably transparent : https://www.nyse.com/market-status/history. If you looked at the list of issues to report, you might have the impression that they have reliability issues quite often. In reality, most people probably don't notice anything.

Did NYSE suspend trading for half day due to IT issue?
Yes, no system is perfect. But does 3 issues in 15 mths suggest higher chances of systematic issues ? If yes, it may be worthwhile to do some review. Its always easier to deal with potential issues before they surface.

Yes, systems may fail. But there's sth called backup system. Not sure if sgx has it.

There are many different kinds of backup for different systems.
For example during Nov2015 issue, it was due to a malfunction of a certain function of the backup generator.

COI found here: http://infopub.sgx.com/FileOpen/20150624...eID=357241

I think we should reserve the comments of the root cause until more thorough explanation is provided. You don't criticize someone for stealing, unless you truly understand what he has stolen and why. Nonetheless, as a SGX shareholder, i think the 2 delays are not acceptable as it hits the reputation and in this business, reputation plays a big role. The institutional and retail public will only allow limited brownie points before you lose it permanently. Between 2 scenarios of (1) not opening for the rest of the day without announcing any delays VS (2) pushing hard to open asap but couldn't, and incurring 2 delays.....the latter is more destructive than the former. Nonetheless, the people making the decsions, are fundamentally salary-drawing employees. Without the ownership mentality, it is easier to make the call to restart asap with 99% confidence, than risk more delays to seek 100%. There is just too much career risk for the latter.


(vested as SGX shareholder)

[TTTI]

The handling of announcement by SGX, imo, was very badly managed.

Making 2 announcements of the reopening hours, then not holding up to their commitment and also mentioning the outage was not a "major problem" shows bad handling on the crisis. While it may be normal for outages, the handling of the issue/crisis falls severely short. This is something many organisations have to learn: the handling of a problem and relaying to the public.

CPF board learnt this the hard way in the introduction of the basic sum in 2013 and has improved its communication channels tremendously since. Fast forward to 2016, I am surprised this "communication problem" is still prevalent among Singapore organisations with local roots (both private and public sector).

If they really care about image or reputation , they would not have few system breakdowns with 2 years.

It's not just about image or reputation. 
Actually, if I am SGX SH, I wouldn't be too bothered about the "reputation" part.
SGX's business is a monopoly. If you want to buy/sell a company listed on SGX, even if SGX has a bad rep, what will you do? You still have to utilize their clearing services. Of course, it's important for every business to have a good reputation, I'm just saying that the reputation doesn't have a direct impact on the shareholders.

Rather, I'd look at it more from the financial standpoint. Such breakdowns and halts basically stop all activities.
And since SGX basically earns from activities, it does hit their bottomline directly. THAT would be what I'm concerned about as a SH.
The more trades, the more activities, the more $$$ for SGX.

If i'm a shareholder (but I'm not), I'll be asking some hard questions of SGX management.

[thor666]

There are many different kinds of backup for different systems.
For example during Nov2015 issue, it was due to a malfunction of a certain function of the backup generator.

COI found here: http://infopub.sgx.com/FileOpen/20150624...eID=357241

I would like to quip my take on the previous incident. I agree with u it is not acceptable. The explanation of failure of a 3rd party DC did not address the concern that there is no disaster recovery (DR) backup datacentre.

I do note that in singapore, we only have a single power grid, hence it is technically impossible to meet a tier 4 dc standard. However, with the type of operations that sgx has, i do not think an uptime service level of 99.5% (5hr/(365*24)) or thereabouts is acceptable.

My guess is that cost is the reason for lack of DR datacentre. My personal viewpoint is that this is the wrong level of priority.

(My opinion based on my limited work knowledge in the IT industry.)

Sent from my LG-H818 using Tapatalk

[weijian]

There are many different kinds of backup for different systems.
For example during Nov2015 issue, it was due to a malfunction of a certain function of the backup generator.

COI found here: http://infopub.sgx.com/FileOpen/20150624...eID=357241

I would like to quip my take on the previous incident. I agree with u it is not acceptable. The explanation of failure of a 3rd party DC did not address the concern that there is no disaster recovery (DR) backup datacentre.

I do note that in singapore, we only have a single power grid, hence it is technically impossible to meet a tier 4 dc standard. However, with the type of operations that sgx has, i do not think an uptime service level of 99.5% (5hr/(365*24)) or thereabouts is acceptable.

My guess is that cost is the reason for lack of DR datacentre. My personal viewpoint is that this is the wrong level of priority.

(My opinion based on my limited work knowledge in the IT industry.)

Sent from my LG-H818 using Tapatalk

hi thor666,
There is a SDC (secondary data center) that i reckon has all the backup. I also reckon this secondary data center is for disaster recovery purposes, as you mentioned. What failed was (1) the failure of the backup generator, (2) followed by not re-considering to abandon the fail-safe method (recover from PDC-primary data center), when new info was available to allow it to fail safe to SDC...my guess is fail safe to SDC would have allowed it to recover much earlier.

[brattzz]

many technical infrastructure experts here sia...SGX got budget issue izzit?
MAS pls come in and see lah... aiyoh!

T+3+1, provided sgx is open tomorrow!

[thor666]

There are many different kinds of backup for different systems.
For example during Nov2015 issue, it was due to a malfunction of a certain function of the backup generator.

COI found here: http://infopub.sgx.com/FileOpen/20150624...eID=357241

I would like to quip my take on the previous incident. I agree with u it is not acceptable. The explanation of failure of a 3rd party DC did not address the concern that there is no disaster recovery (DR) backup datacentre.

I do note that in singapore, we only have a single power grid, hence it is technically impossible to meet a tier 4 dc standard. However, with the type of operations that sgx has, i do not think an uptime service level of 99.5% (5hr/(365*24)) or thereabouts is acceptable.

My guess is that cost is the reason for lack of DR datacentre. My personal viewpoint is that this is the wrong level of priority.

(My opinion based on my limited work knowledge in the IT industry.)

Sent from my LG-H818 using Tapatalk

hi thor666,
There is a SDC (secondary data center) that i reckon has all the backup. I also reckon this secondary data center is for disaster recovery purposes, as you mentioned. What failed was (1) the failure of the backup generator, (2) followed by not re-considering to abandon the fail-safe method (recover from PDC-primary data center), when new info was available to allow it to fail safe to SDC...my guess is fail safe to SDC would have allowed it to recover much earlier.

Thank u for sharing this.
Seems they thought it might be more risky to trigger the SDC. Not sure if that is a good thing.


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