DSE slow over remote data centre plan

The Dhaka Stock Exchange is moving at a snail’s pace in regard to establishing a remote data centre outside Dhaka for disaster recovery purposes.

Despite the bourse took the initiative in 2018 to form a remote recovery data centre to avoid any inconvenience in the exiting centre due to any natural calamity, it failed to execute the plan.

Market operators said that the remote recovery centre outside Dhaka was very much necessary to continue trading activities even in a natural disaster.

They said that stock exchange of many countries had back-up engine to reduce risk of stoppage in trading, but Bangladesh did not have one even after 70 years of the DSE’s inception.

DSE officials said that establishing a recovery data centre was a big project and so it needed a huge amount of money as well as time

They said that the DSE’s strategic partner would be with the DSE for sharing their knowledge and experience in pertaining to the issue.

It will also take suggestions from the TREC holders for developing and implementing the data centre plan, they said.

A Chinese consortium of Shenzhen and Shanghai stock exchanges on September 4, 2018 became DSE’s strategic partner by purchasing 45,09,44,125 ordinary shares of the DSE for Tk 947 crore.

The Chinese consortium offered a technical assistance worth over $37 million to the DSE.

In line with the pledge, the consortium suggested that the DSE form a recovery data centre in a remote area.

Experts at the SZSE on May 28, 2019 under the technical cooperation plan for the DSE provided their views on the matter.

The consortium said that when the same-city dual centre broke down due to a natural disaster, the remote disaster recovery centre would recover business with backup data.

The bourse should consider power grids, river basins, seismic zones and regions when selecting a site for installing such recovery data centre, it said.

Redundancy and fault-tolerance should be taken into account when planning and designing the telecommunication, architecture and structure, electrical systems and mechanical systems situation, the group said.

The remote data centre can be built independently, jointly, or supported by professional disaster recovery servers, at DSE’s option based on its actual situation, it said.

DSE officials said that the remote disaster-recovery centre could provide co-location service at the same time to improve the utilising efficiency of the data centre.

They were not certain when the recovery centre would be formed.

Market analysts said that the bourse should give importance in building a back-up centre as the Dhaka city was considered one of the highest risk earthquake areas.

The DSE should have done this long before, they said.