“We are proud to have
partnered with Strate, our
long-standing customer,
in this transformational
journey. The TCS BaNCS
solution has delivered a lean,
simplified, state-of-the-art
technology stack that reduces
operational risks, improves
business agility and enhances
customer experience. Strate
has set a benchmark for
market infrastructure players
globally in the adoption of
modern technologies to drive
innovation and to future-proof
operations.”
R Vivekanand,
Head, TCS Financial Solutions
Multiple testing phases
Within each phase, TCS and Strate adhered to
a rigorous, five-part testing cycle comprising of
Verification Testing (during development/build),
System Integration Testing, User Acceptance
Testing, Market Acceptance Testing and Parallel
Run/Testing.
The final phase, Parallel Testing, placed TCS
BaNCS for Market Infrastructure onto a preproduction
environment running concurrently with
the legacy production environment, enabling close
observation of system behavior using actual intraday
transactions.
Demonstrating an extremely high level of
diligence and care, Strate maintained its Parallel
Testing environment for eight months. “We were
able to get statistics and information that we would
never have picked up otherwise,” says Naicker. “By
tracking the behavior of customers, custodians,
members, and regulators, we ingested every single
type of scenario from a live production
environment into the parallel environment, in
ways that wouldn’t be possible to simulate
with testing scripts alone.”
By comparing messages generated from
the live production system and the parallel
system, Strate was able to identify and
address issues related to interfaces with
Strate’s clients. “The end result was that the post
go-live experience was very stable, much to the
satisfaction of our clients,” adds Naicker.
Parallel Testing also demonstrated the ability of
TCS BaNCS for Market Infrastructure to handle the
high volumes required to support equities.
“We saw early on that performance wasn’t going
to be a problem whatsoever, which meant that
we could focus on functionality and interfaces,”
says Rudi Steenkamp, Head of Integration and
Data Services for Strate. “Now, we are able to
get settlements done faster than before, thereby
improving our service to customers.”
Strate took a highly flexible approach to
deployment methodologies, matching development
practices to the needs of the project during each
particular stage.
Deployment methodologies were backed by
constant communications. Governance processes
were implemented at various tiers of engagement
from technology, business functionality, data
migration and project management through
to executive levels. This ensured progress was
tracked daily, weekly and monthly. Operations
staff were brought into the testing lifecycle early
resulting in early system adoption by its
users.
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