Credit Suisse First Boston Case Study
Industry
Credit Suisse First Boston ("CSFB") is a leading global investment
banking firm, providing comprehensive financial advisory services,
sales and trading, and financial products around the world. The Foreign
Exchange Department within CSFB's Trading Division maintains a trading
floor in New York City.
Challenge
CSFB wanted to improve the flow of information in its front office
and promote a sense of global community. In order to share critical
market information such as research, news, rumors and market chat,
CSFB traders were literally shouting to each other across the room
or referring to multiple sources. The company tried several alternatives,
including email and a system based on Internet News technology, but
found the inherent time-delays and system interrupts unacceptable.
What CSFB wanted and needed was a real-time, reliable, text-based messaging
system that would be simple to use and would allow users to identify
themselves.
Solution
CSFB worked with Metronome Systems, a New York software constancy,
to create Global Talk, a text-based messaging system. Using Tcl and
TclPro as their software development technology, Metronome was able
to quickly design and deploy a reliable, real-time messaging system
for CSFB's Trading Division that has transformed communication on the
trading floor.
Results
Tcl and TclPro enabled CSFB and Metronome to rapidly create the prototype
for the messaging application, in order to demonstrate proof-of-concept,
then quickly move into full production. With Tcl's ability to support
rapid software evolution, they were able to incorporate traders' input
on application enhancement in just a few days. By taking advantage
of Tcl's powerful integration capabilities, Metronome was able to embed
C-based programs in the application to provide additional functionality.
Global Talk has radically changed the way traders interact with each
other on the trading floor, and has become an important, business-critical
application that impacts the company's bottom line.
"Global Talk is an important part of the culture at
CSFB. This simple but powerful messaging system that was originally
designed to improve the communications flow on our trading floor has
grown to become an essential tool for CSFB. Because it's built with
Tcl, Global Talk works well across all our platforms and has kept support
costs low. It's certainly had a positive impact on our success as an
organization."
-David Long, Chief Operating Officer of Global Foreign Exchange,
at Credit Suisse First Boston
Introduction
One of the world's leading investment firms, Credit Suisse First Boston
("CSFB") provides comprehensive financial advisory services, capital
raising, financial products, sales and trading for users and suppliers
of capital around the world. The trading floor for CSFB's Foreign Exchange
Department in Manhattan can be a hectic and noisy environment. Each
trader monitors numerous computer screens to simultaneously track trading
activity, market trends and breaking financial news from around the
world.
Despite the amazing advances in computing and telecommunications technology
that have transformed the financial industry over the years, inter-personal
communication between traders and their partners in remote offices
has remained a decidedly low-tech affair. It is still common on many
trading floors to have traders yelling orders and prices to each other
from across the room. This was the case with CSFB's Foreign Exchange
trading floor. In an effort to improve the flow of information on the
Foreign Exchange trading floor, CSFB traders began looking for a real-time
messaging solution to link its entire trading floor staff and turned
to Metronome for help.
Metronome
Metronome Systems, LLC is a New York-based software engineering and
consulting company that specializes in the rapid development and deployment
of custom applications - typically client/server or integrated multi-tiered
applications. Metronome's principals - programmers Danny Chen and Michal
Melamede - had successfully completed several projects for CSFB when
they were approached to create and deploy a real-time messaging solution
to link traders on the bank's Foreign Exchange trading floor.
Using the Tcl scripting platform, the Metronome team designed and deployed
IMBB/Global Talk, a real-time messaging system for CSFB's Foreign Exchange
trading floor staff. "CSFB requested a communications tool that would
be reliable, simple to use, and would allow users to identify themselves
and the type of information they were posting," explained Michal Melamede.
"Traders were literally shouting to each other from across the room.
They depended on getting and sharing up-to-the-second information,
so real-time functionality was key." Metronome developed IMBB/Global
Talk's front-end client in Tcl, and developed back-end support features
in C. CSFB wanted a messaging solution that would fit unobtrusively
within its existing systems - in terms of screen size and processing
resources. Real estate is at a premium on the trading floor, especially
computer monitor space, because traders need to have a vast array of
up-to-the-second data on their desktops in order to make instant decisions.
"We wanted a messaging solution that didn't require a lot of windows
or pull-downs, because every mouse click is wasted time," explained
Chief Operating Officer of Global Foreign Exchange, at Credit Suisse
First Boston. "It had to be fast and easy for the traders to use, and
graphically very clean. When Metronome came up with IMBB/Global Talk
we were very pleased, all the functionality is contained within one
window. Each message is identified by the person's name, the time they
sent the message, where they're located and then the text. If the message
is too long, you have an indication that you need to double-click to
get additional information. And users can choose their own color, too.
Which is a great way to quickly identify who your message is coming
from."
A Flexible Platform for a Powerful Messaging Solution
When Chen and Melamede were first asked to implement a messaging system
by CSFB, they looked at some off-the-shelf messaging applications,
but quickly decided to develop their own solution using the Tcl/Tk
scripting platform. Tcl's cross-platform flexibility and functionality,
as well as its ease of use and short development times were deciding
factors in its choice as the basis for IMBB/Global Talk. In addition,
Chen and Melamede have been able to extend and improve upon their original
solution using the TclPro suite of tools from Scriptics.
Metronome's Danny Chen explains: "Using Tcl and TclPro to build IMBB/Global
Talk has proved beneficial to us in a number of ways. First, Tcl enables
very rapid development times. It's hard to quantify, but I'd say Tcl
enabled the two of us to do the work of ten programmers working in
C. Being able to demonstrate a working solution to the client so quickly
after getting the assignment was critical to our initial success, as
was the ability to add new features to IMBB/Global Talk's core functionality.
We developed a prototype of the system in about a week, and then repeatedly
revised it to the client's specifications over the following couple
of months. Second, with TclPro, porting IMBB/Global Talk to Windows
NT was a trivial operation. Tcl's cross-platform capabilities are outstanding."
Chen and Melamede considered several languages as the platform for
IMBB/Global Talk, but quickly decided on Tcl. "When CSFB first asked
us to work on the messaging problem we thought about using other languages
- such as C programming with X or Motif libraries - but we wouldn't
have been able to develop the prototype so quickly. And we certainly
wouldn't have been able to make changes in the following weeks like
we did with Tcl. No other platform was going to give us that quick
prototyping ability and flexibility to add on new features."
The Tcl platform also enabled Chen and Melamede to develop robust back-end
functionality and useful, flexible interface features that have added
real value. "Ease of use was a major concern of the client, and Tcl
provided an ideal solution because it's so easy to make a great GUI
with it," said Chen. "Because Tcl enables easy customization, we were
able to quickly revise our prototype to include things like an identification
feature which tells who sent the message, and a history feature, so
users can see a log of their recent message traffic. And surprisingly,
one of the most well received features was the choice of input colors.
Traders can pick their own color for the messages they send - it makes
it easy to quickly determine who sent a message. We actually had arguments
over who got what color first!"
"Back-end logging has turned out be a very important feature, too,"
added Melamede. "CSFB's traders must have the ability to track and
access messages that were sent yesterday, or last week. The off-the-shelf
messaging solutions CSFB looked at just couldn't provide a reliable,
full history function. With IMBB/Global Talk, we were able to develop
a powerful history function in C that is easily accessible through
the Tcl front end. Now, traders refer to old messages all the time,
and they can look up things from days and weeks ago if needed."
Tcl's cross-platform availability was crucial to Metronome, also. "Our
front-end runs unmodified on Windows and all the Unix platforms supported
by TclPro," said Melamede. "Sophisticated, global organizations like
CSFB maintain many different systems, and with Tcl and TclPro we get
valuable functionality like remote debugging on Unix platforms and
Windows NT. In fact, on Unix platforms it's easy to log into users'
workstations to diagnose and solve problems, but the facilities for
doing so on Windows NT are currently rather weak. TclPro's remote debugging
interface helps to fill that gap." "Another valuable attribute with
Tcl is that deployment is so easy," added Chen. "When we want to roll-out
to new sites, we can simply distribute a small bit of Tcl code which
then instructs the client to load software from the server. And we
can rollback distribution in the same way, without having to redistribute
to multiple sites.
"In addition to using Tcl as a cross-platform scripting language to
implement front-ends, we also take advantage of the ease with which
the Tcl interpreter can be embedded into C programs," continued Melamede.
"We have used this to both configure our applications' runtime behavior
and to extend the programmability of our applications. Using Tcl and
TclPro with the commercial support from Scriptics Corporation has been
a big factor in our success."
A New Way to Communicate
How has Tcl-powered real-time messaging changed the way Credit Suisse
First Boston does business? "Originally we saw this messaging system
as a means to eliminate the yelling and shouting among the hundreds
of people on our Foreign Exchange trading floor, but it has become
so much bigger than that," said David Long, Chief Operating Officer
of Global Foreign Exchange, at Credit Suisse First Boston. "We now
have about 1,400 users in offices all over the world - Europe, Asia,
here in New York and around the US. And some of our traders have more
than one application running at the same time, so I'd say we have about
2,000 copies installed. Because it's built with Tcl, IMBB/Global Talk
works great across all our platforms and has kept support costs very
low. Global Talk provides a whiteboard style real-time information
sharing system. We use it to keep all our front office teams supplied
with the latest research and news. All users can see all the items
- it promotes a sense of global community - it's one way in which we
make our 'Global Foreign Exchange' business truly global."
What are the main benefits of CSFB's new Tcl-based real-time messaging
system? "Overall we're seeing fewer mistakes and better decision making,"
said David Long, Chief Operating Officer of Global Foreign Exchange,
at Credit Suisse First Boston. "The most obvious benefit is that we
have a much more reliable means of communicating: clear, accurate text-based
messages as opposed to orders yelled across the room. And it's in real-time,
so we haven't lost any of the immediacy of person-to-person communication.
Also, we have instant text-based communication with our offices all
over the world - so our traders have the benefit of information from
throughout the enterprise, not just from within their own department.
IMBB/Global Talk is now an essential part of the culture at CSFB, and
has had a tremendous positive effect on improving the flow of information
enterprise-wide. It's certainly had a positive impact on our success
as an organization."
