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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 on Thursday, September 17th as part of its Business Continuity Planning (BCP) process.
Twice each year, BATS executes this critical phase 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 126 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 New York, Chicago, London and Singapore continued normal operations.
“One of our top priorities and responsibilities as a global exchange operator is business continuity planning and, more importantly, the testing of those plans. Last Thursday we successfully operated all five of our U.S. markets from our local DR site 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. “Redundancy of our infrastructure is critical to our business and customers and is something that we take very seriously.”
Last Thursday, the four BATS U.S. equities markets handled 1.9 billion shares, which totaled 23.5% of all U.S. equities trading. The BATS BZX Options market handled 2.5 million contracts, which totaled 11.1% of all U.S. options market share. Thursday, September 17th was a particularly heavy volume day given that the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) released its statement from its September meeting.
In addition to last Thursday’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 Kansas City-area 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.
