BATS Global Markets (BATS), a leading operator of exchanges and services for financial markets globally, today announced the successful and total operation of its U.S. markets from its Kansas City-area disaster recovery (DR) site yesterday as part of its Business Continuity Planning (BCP) process.
Twice each year, BATS executes this critical test of its BCP process by disconnecting the company’s global headquarters from all outside network access for the day, mirroring what could happen in a disaster situation. All of the 110 employees based at BATS’ global headquarters in Kansas City either reported to the DR site and conducted their daily routines from the secure and remote location or worked remotely. The BATS offices in the New York area, Chicago, London and Singapore continued normal operations.
“Yesterday marked the first BCP test since the completion of the integration of the Direct Edge exchanges to BATS technology earlier this year and I’m pleased to report that we successfully operated all five markets in a seamless manner, with no disruption in service or performance for our customers,” said Chris Isaacson, Executive Vice President, Global Chief Information Officer at BATS Global Markets. “As one of the world’s largest stock market operators, redundancy is critical to our business and something that we take very seriously. The success of yesterday’s test is a testament to the hard work of our team and the ongoing efforts we put into the testing of our business continuity planning process.”
In addition to yesterday’s semi-annual BCP test, BATS also tests its local Kansas City DR site each month. For one full day monthly since 2008, the company’s Operations, Technology, Regulatory and Surveillance teams in Kansas City have operated from the local DR site, with the primary headquarters remaining online.
In addition to the local DR site for the global headquarters, BATS maintains a DR site in Chicago that serves as a backup for its exchange technology infrastructure that is located in Secaucus, N.J.
