The London Stock Exchange boasts of a 100% reliability track record for its trading platform over the past seven years. This, it says, is a unique achievement, where its competitors, the Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange, fall short.

                       

And, for all those seven years, it has depended on Accenture to maintain the infrastructure to deliver 100% reliability. But now the Exchange is bringing back IT infrastructure maintenance in-house and is terminating its infrastructure support contract with Accenture.

 

The Exchange’s decision is rooted in the swift changes that electronic trading is bringing to the world of stock exchanges. Stock exchanges have come to depend on IT to the extent that they are as good as the IT systems that support their trading platforms. So by taking in 150 of Accenture employees who managed the nuts and bolts of the Exchange’s trading platform, the company has brought back support for its core process in-house.

 

For the employees the change will not be very significant — as Accenture employees, most of them already work onsite at the Exchange’s premises. “It’s simply like giving the employees a new contract — from Accenture employees the people have become London Stock Exchange employees,” an Exchange spokesperson told Global Services.

 

But, what about the cost implications of bringing back staff in-house? The company will not run up a bill larger than what it was paying Accenture insists the Exchange. In fact, there is some cost saving for them in this arrangement. “We have some cost saving. We save on management fee that we pay Accenture,” says the Exchange spokesperson.

 

While the Exchange has terminated its relationship with Accenture on IT infrastructure support, it has renewed its contract with the provider for software development for another two years. Accenture will continue to develop and maintain software to ensure that the Exchange’s IT systems are cutting edge.

 

In fact, TradeElect, the Exchange’s 40 million pound new trading software that went live on June 18^th in London was co-developed by Accenture.