How a New Distributed Core Trading System Earned Top DevOps Ratings at China Securities

On December 26, 2022, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) announced the latest batch of DevOps standard assessment results. China Merchants Securities (CMS) participated with its "New Generation Core Trading System" project, which passed the Level 2 Technical Operation assessment of the DevOps Capability Maturity Model, demonstrating an advanced domestic capability.

The new core trading system integrates multiple business functions such as centralized trading, margin financing, stock options, order processing, and general services. Technically, it shifts from a centralized to a distributed micro‑service architecture, moves hardware from IBM to Intel, changes operating systems from Unix to Linux, and adopts programming languages from C to Java. It also incorporates many open‑source middleware components like Redis and Zookeeper. The system now supports account, margin, and wealth management services, and aims to ensure stable production for upcoming centralized trading modules.

Q&A Highlights

Q: Please introduce the project you evaluated. CMS is a century‑old securities firm under the China Merchants Group, holding a full securities license and operating globally. The project represents both business integration and a major technical upgrade, introducing distributed micro‑services and extensive open‑source components.

Q: How does the DevOps technical‑operation assessment benefit your team? Achieving Level 2 confirms improvements in personnel, technology, and processes, boosting confidence in stable operation of the new system as it scales from under 100 to over 1,000 nodes and moves from manual terminal operations to large‑scale automated management.

Q: What challenges did you face during the assessment? The distributed architecture increased node count and complexity, requiring robust monitoring, change impact analysis, and fault localization. The team overcame pandemic‑related disruptions and coordinated across Shenzhen and Wuhan sites, leveraging the SEE operations platform for integrated monitoring, automation, and release management.

Q: What specific improvements were made? The team built a virtual team for better communication, established an operations tool platform, refined processes, and enhanced automation. They also accelerated the development of low‑code, full‑link analysis, and intelligent perception platforms, improving capacity management and user‑experience scores.

Q: What are the future plans? CMS plans to expand intelligent operations 2.0 tools (chaos engineering, big‑data operations, unified API gateway), solidify key processes (alert handling, change release, emergency drills, performance capacity), and propagate best practices to other business systems.

SEE Operations Console

The SEE platform provides unified management of applications (deployment, upgrade, governance), monitoring (hardware, network, system, components, databases, business metrics), and automation (scripted workflows, custom orchestration). It supports over a thousand micro‑service nodes, enabling batch monitoring and releases without terminal login.

Key visualizations include:

Business chain topology for change impact analysis.

Full‑business‑link monitoring dashboards.

User‑experience optimization via intelligent perception.

Industry Assessment Statistics

As of December 26, 2022, the securities industry has completed numerous DevOps assessments across continuous delivery, technical operation, security & risk management, and system/tool standards. The accompanying chart (not shown) ranks enterprises by the number of evaluated projects.

DevOps Capability Maturity Model

The DevOps Capability Maturity Model, led by CAICT with contributions from cloud‑computing alliances, major internet firms, and financial and telecom enterprises, is the first comprehensive DevOps standard series in China and has been adopted by many leading companies. It was officially concluded by the ITU‑T in July 2020 as the world’s first international DevOps standard. The model covers processes (agile management, continuous delivery, technical operation), application design, security, system and tool management, value management, collaborative development, and continuous testing.

For further information on DevOps assessments, contact CAICT or the listed representatives.