Nomura Research Institute, Ltd. (NRI: Tokyo; Akihisa Fujinuma, President, CEO & COO) has been commissioned to provide the full outsourcing of a new online trade system for E*trade Securities Co., Ltd. (E*Trade Securities: Tokyo; Taro Izuchi, President & CEO), and commenced the service on July 2003.

NRI has been previously commissioned to provide middle- and back-office systems operations by E*Trade Securities, and recently was chosen to be in charge of front systems development and core platform restructuring. Now NRI is in a position to provide comprehensive services covering all aspects from web front to back-office systems, thereby dramatically improving the stability and reliability of the systems that form the backbone of E*trade Securities' online trading.

During the restructuring of the latest system, NRI focused on improvements of response allowing better accommodation of the online trader's active transactions, and carried out an overall review of the systems infrastructure. Furthermore, in order to ensure levels of flexibility capable of responding to expected expansion of transactions, we introduced, for the first time in online securities trading, a low cost but highly expandable Linux-based system for the core platform.

The new system provides approximately double the capacity of the former system, and, furthermore, with the adoption of Linux, PCs were adopted as web servers and applications servers, formerly only available on high-end UNIX servers, thereby realizing significant reductions in hardware investment and running costs.

Many of the financial institutions in the U.S. have adopted Linux on their systems, and its flexibility and expandability have already been well documented, as has its superior cost efficiency.

NRI continues to select optimum technology, and to develop systems capable of contributing to our clients' business innovation.

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