CEC Mulls Responses To RFP For New Price Reporting System, Seeks Control Of Information Destiny

The Commodities Exchange Center (CEC) is evaluating responses to a request for proposal to upgrade its 10-year-old price reporting system. A decision is expected sometime this spring.

Goals for the new system include acceleration of price input and reporting to information vendors, miniaturization and more timely and direct control over content and display format.

The CEC provides space and facilities for five independent commodities exchanges: the Coffee, Sugar & Cocoa Exchange, Inc., the Commodity Exchange Inc., the New York Cotton Exchange, the New York Mercantile Exchange and, most recently, the New York Futures exchange.

The CEC's existing price reporting system is based on Quotron Q801 and Q1000 controllers. Like other Quotron customers, the CEC must wait for new tapes to be cut when changes in display format or content are needed. The CEC wants more immediate control over its information destiny.

Quotron is one of eight firms bidding on the project, estimated to be worth about $5 million. Other bidders include AT&T, DEC with SPC Software Sciences Inc., IBM with Femcon Associates, Rich Inc.'s special developments group with FD Consulting and Stratus, Sequent Computer Systems Inc. with Arthur Andersen & Co., Tandem Computers with Logica Systems Inc. and Teknekron Software Systems Inc.

AGS Information Services Inc., a software consulting company owned by NYNEX, developed the RFP for the new price reporting system and will advise on the selection of finalists. A bake-off involving demonstrations and detailed implementation plans from two or three finalists will begin some time in March.

Bidding for the CEC's new price reporting system coincides with the New York Mercantile Exchange's recent announcement that it will consider linking up to Globex, the after-hours trading network being developed by Reuters Holdings Plc and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

"Nothing will be drastically different," says James Neal, general manager of the Commodities Exchange Center. "We're not planning on changing our trading system or anything like that. We still want to take the trades in, turn them around, massage them, and pump them out to our vendors just as quickly as we can."

The RFP calls for data entry to occur at a rate of two prices per second per input clerk. Turnaround time between price entry and transmission to quote vendors is expected to be reduced to less than one second. Turnaround currently ranges from three to five seconds.

Like every tenant in Manhattan, the CEC faces the ultimate reality of space wars. "You couldn't fit another booth on that floor with a shoehorn and a gallon of baby oil," says Gerald Tellefsen, senior vice president of Tellefsen Consulting Group. The CEC wants to consolidate the existing floor-plan and create room for growth. Hence the RFP's emphasis on miniaturization. No word yet on whether or where the exchange floor will be moved.

Improved connectivity is on the CEC's shopping list, and so is direct, immediate control over content and display attributes right down to the data element level. "We want the new system to be able to interface with any kind of peripheral equipment you might find on the floor, whether it's LED screens or color screens for graphics displays," says Neal. "That's one thing we can't do with our current system."

The price reporting project will likely involve the development of an internal ticker plant capable of combining internally generated price data with real-time information from other exchanges. Price data from Chicago and London futures exchanges will be handled by the new price reporting system for side-by-side display with internally generated prices in the trading pits, sources say.

When the New York Futures Exchange joined the CEC last year, stand-alone Quotron terminals were brought in to provide access to New York Stock Exchange and other external data sources. Prior to the arrival of the NYFE, the price reporting system's data requirements were satisfied internally.

Quote vendors handling CEC data will be pleased to learn that with the new price reporting system, the CEC data feed will conform to the Interexchange Technical Committee's standard record format. The ITC, whose membership includes all U.S. futures exchanges, is working toward implementation of a common data feed protocol. To date, the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange have converted to the ITC specification.