Nasdaq Announces New MarketWatch Surveillance System

The Nasdaq Stock Market® today (September 27) announced that it has named its new Surveillance Delivery Real-time (SDR) system as its System of Record for analyzing and monitoring market behavior. SDR is designed to monitor market transactions within two seconds and alert Nasdaq MarketWatch analysts of unusual trading patterns via a workstation user interface. The system, which went into production on September 2, 1999, enables Nasdaq® to provide quicker and broader surveillance of the market by better focusing on likely situations requiring investigation. SDR uses state-of-the-art technology including alert detection systems which are brand new to the industry and fully meet the strenuous operational requirements of the Nasdaq Stock Market. SDR was also designed to scale up to meet the Market demands of tomorrow-anticipating a four billion share trading day. "Nasdaq's new Surveillance Delivery Real-time system is an alert detection and presentation system that is unmatched in its speed and ability by any other financial market in the world," said Gregor S. Bailar, Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer of the National Association of Securities Dealers, Inc. (NASD®)-the parent of The Nasdaq Stock Market. "After thorough testing, we have created a state-of-the-art system that will help to maintain a level playing field for shareholders and protect the integrity of the marketplace for all participants." SDR is based on the Microsoft® Windows NT® 4.0 Server Enterprise Edition platform and additional Microsoft components including Microsoft SQL Serverä 6.5 with Service Pack 5A (future phases of SDR will be developed in SQL Server 7.0), Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS), Microsoft Message Queue Server (MSMQ), Microsoft Clustering Server, and Microsoft Management Console. The system-which replaced a Tandem K20000 -- is deployed using hardware from Unisys and Dell including Unisys Aquanta servers employing 4 500 Mhz Intel® Pentium® III XeonTM processors with 512 megabytes of memory in most machines and 2 gigabytes of memory in Alert Engine and Database Servers with Unisys OSR 5000 RAID drives, as well as Dell Precision 610-2 450 Mhz Intel® Pentium® II processors with 256 megabytes of memory and dual monitors. Three significant partners have been involved in the design and development of SDR: Microsoft Corporation, Unisys Corporation and Micro Modeling Associates (MMA). MMA was the lead technical partner working with Nasdaq to develop the SDR system. MMA partnered with Unisys to conduct a proof-of-concept benchmark. Based on the benchmark's success, Nasdaq went ahead with development of the system. The benchmark was designed to test functionality, but more importantly to assess the operational stability and scalability for Nasdaq's overall business requirements for MarketWatch. The mission of Nasdaq MarketWatch is to facilitate regulatory oversight of The Nasdaq Stock Market. The Department monitors news and market information disseminated to the public and exercises trading halt authority when appropriate. All suspicious activity noted by MarketWatch is immediately referred to Regulation® for further review and investigation. The Nasdaq Stock Market lists nearly 5,000 companies, has the largest dollar volume of trades of any financial market, and trades more shares per day than any other U.S. market. Current market capitalization is $3.33 trillion. Nasdaq is a subsidiary of the NASD, the largest securities-industry, self-regulatory organization in the United States. For more information about Nasdaq, visit the Nasdaq Web site at www.nasdaq.com or the Nasdaq- NewsroomSM at www.nasdaqnews.com.