Digiterre's development services in portfolio, trading and risk management for energy and commodities trading entities

About Digiterre

T-Zero and Calypso Markets Integration

Automated Integration Between T-Zero and Calypso

T-Zero

Background

T-Zero's mission is to provide the technology to modernize communication standards for parties involved in credit derivatives trading. Through its messaging system T-Zero provides a platform for communication and electronic affirmation of CDS trades on a T+0 basis combined with a new market standard for workflow and accountability.
While T-Zero provides its own front-end application for trade capture, the full benefits of the T-Zero platform are realized through the integration of the platform with clients' own trading and trade capture systems.

Digiterre has been working with T-Zero providing consulting services to T-Zero's integration team and working closely with T-Zero's clients to develop integration between their systems and the platform for some nine months. This has included the development of integration between T-Zero and GlobeOp's Kondor+ based system.

"Digiterre delivers on time and on budget while effectively managing evolving requirements-I strongly recommend them," says Ben Lis, Head of Integration at T-Zero.

Project Summary  

Seamless integration between T-Zero and Calypso:

  • Packaged solution for ease of implementation
  • Support for all T-Zero trade and transaction types
  • Robust and flexible architecture

The Challenge

With the growth in the use of the Calypso cross-asset trading platform (www.calypso.com) for credit derivatives trading by both sell and buy-side organizations, T-Zero saw an opportunity for a packaged connectivity solution between T-Zero and Calypso providing:

  • Coverage for all T-Zero supported trade types-CDS, CDS Index and Index Tranche.
  • Coverage of all T-Zero transaction types-new deals, allocations, terminations, novations and voids.
  • Support for processes including Prime Brokers.
  • Independence between the Connector and the Calypso implementation.
  • A robust architecture with guaranteed message delivery.
  • A packaged solution with minimal configuration required for each client installation.

The Technology

Java 1.5:

  • Connector implements T-Zero messaging API
  • Connector implements the Calypso Event Engine API
  • XML files for configuration and data mapping

The Solution

Digiterre was engaged by T-Zero to implement the Calypso Connector including specification, prototyping, development and testing.

To manage and reduce project risk Digiterre adopted an iterative development model. We split the project into a series of iterations, each focusing on a specific area of functionality and following a complete design/build/test cycle. The first iteration addressed architectural risk by prototyping the design for a basic transaction. Further iterations added new deal, termination and novation processes.

Digiterre worked closely with T-Zero throughout the development ensuring the Connector was integrated with the latest versions of the API and with Calypso to ensure Calypso best practice was being followed. Key iterations included a review by T-Zero and selected beta clients to ensure that the Connector was meeting all business needs. Feedback from these reviews was then fed into future iterations.