Matlock Capital Streamlines Batch Job Scheduling with JAMS

COMPANY BACKGROUND

Matlock Capital LLC (www.matcap.com) is a Chicago-based proprietary trading firm working in the areas of financial engineering, systems, and trading. The firm primarily focuses on the automated trading of both equities and equity options on all US exchanges, particularly as a market maker on the Chicago Board Options Exchange.

THE CHALLENGES

Operations at Matlock Capital needed a way to handle the increasing number and complexity of IT processes while reducing the need for human intervention. They needed a better way to manage the many interdependent overnight jobs post-processing market information needed for trading the next day. They required an enterprise- wide solution allowing them to monitor the performance of jobs across multiple operating systems in multiple locations from a central console.

Migrating away from platform-specific scheduling tools posed the threat of delays and increased downtime, but there was a clear need for a solution that could monitor a myriad of job types, handle complicated schedules, and offer robust alerting and reporting.

Ease of use and a fast return on investment also played a factor in selecting a batch automation solution. They needed a product that operators could intuitively understand.

THE SOLUTIONS

After evaluating several solutions, Matlock Capital selected JAMS to manage their proprietary executables, scripts, and dozens of service controls orchestrating the analysis and movement of data. Other solutions did not offer a seamless transition, a fast ROI, and outstanding technical support.

Matlock Capital began a smooth migration to JAMS by pulling together UNIX based and Windows based scheduling systems. JP Layug, Operations Engineer at Matlock, stated, “From our initial tests, and from porting over some critical jobs, we immediately noticed that the setup process in JAMS is straightforward and the results are very reliable.”

THE BENEFITS

Matlock Capital has peace of mind with JAMS in place. “We are relying on JAMS to take care of our job scheduling needs in a streamlined and reliable manner,” adds JP. “With JAMS, Matlock Capital has taken control of production scheduling across the enterprise from a single point.” JAMS provides Matlock Capital operators with a single viewpoint of all jobs running on various servers. No more running around from system to system to verify successful operation. The productivity and efficiency benefits were enormous.