.How CSCS is repositioning Nigeria’s capital market – official
The Central Securities Clearing System Plc (CSCS)on Saturday said its technological innovations had contributed largely to the current leap in the operations and services of the Nigeria’s capital market.
The Head, Business Technology and Digital Innovation of CSCS, Mr Tobe Nnadozie, stated this in a chart with newsmen on Saturday in Lagos.
He explained that the boost is delivering a new era in the country’s capital market technology with Nutanix at the helm.
CSCS led by Mr Haruna Jalo-Waziri, the Managing Director/ Chief Executive Officer, is Nigeria’s Central Securities Depository (CSD), licensed to carry on the depository, clearing and settlement of all transactions in the Nigerian Capital Market.
The company processes an astounding 99.9 per cent of all equity trades in the capital markets, underscored by its preeminent position in the equities market and considerable presence in bonds and other financial areas.
Over the last four years, CSCS has evolved as a technology giant in the market, connecting all stakeholders and changing the narratives that have affected the growth of the market.
Boasting of an average uptime of 99.9999% of her infrastructure and platforms, the organisation has enabled a lot of innovations in the market.
These included the provision of 24/7 view of investor’s portfolio and various platforms.
According to Nnadozie, 100 per cent of brokers in the capital market rely on the CSCS platform to complete various forms of transactions and provide portfolio management of their investors.
“At CSCS, we have built a robust technological framework as the cornerstone of our success, propelling us to the pinnacle of Nigeria’s capital market.
“A defining characteristic of the business is that it is our deep-rooted technological ethos and the fact that we are not just a financial entity but fundamentally as a technology company operating within the capital market,”he said.
According to him, in 2018, CSCS began re-evaluating its operational strategy and recognised the need for an infrastructure overhaul.
Nnadozie said following a thorough analysis of potential partners Nutanix emerged as a clear front-runner.
The CSCS official stated that transitioning to a new infrastructure was a great feat, as its legacy system was a behemoth with an intricate web of over 70 physical servers.
He added:: “In our blueprint for technological metamorphosis, Nutanix was at the core.
“With their invaluable expertise, we streamlined our sprawling infrastructure to about 50 optimised servers.
“Our new avatar included a cutting-edge multi-cloud disaster recovery environment that promised rapid recovery and ensured zero downtime.
“I have been in IT leadership for over 20 years, and managing infrastructure has always been the biggest challenge.
“With Nutanix, that concern has taken a backseat. When I get a daily risk report from the chief risk officer, infrastructure on our Nutanix platforms is hardly ever on it, and if it is, we already have a solution.”
According to him, the collaboration with Nutanix witnessed an overhaul of nearly 90 per cent of CSCS’s systems, which were transitioned to just five Nutanix clusters.
Nnadozie noted that these included a three-node cluster for its production environment and a two-node cluster for its disaster recovery (DR) environment – paving the way for a streamlined and futuristic operational module.
