Omgeo is committed to providing highly reliable and available solutions to our clients.  One of the ways in which we support this commitment is through a comprehensive Business Continuity Program (BCP) that enables Omgeo to respond to and recover from a business disruption.  Our mission is to resume normal business and client support operations with minimal service impact on our clients in the shortest time possible.

1. What is Omgeo’s overall business continuity strategy?

Our current BCP strategy combines managing multiple production facilities and leveraging our global presence to support client needs.  Our geographic diversity is a key advantage to our ability to minimize business disruptions that could have an impact on one of our office locations.
 
A disruption at any one of our production facilities or office locations will immediately prompt our senior management to activate our crisis management process to ensure that services to our clients are resumed as quickly as possible.  All areas of the company have documented continuity plans to guide them in executing the steps necessary to minimize the impact of a disruption on our clients.  Regular testing of these plans ensures that our staff is prepared to execute these plans efficiently.

2.   How does Omgeo ensure optimum reliability and availability of Omgeo CTM?

Omgeo ensures complete reliability and ultra-high availability of Omgeo CTM at all levels of the infrastructure.  Omgeo CTM resides within the world-class data center of The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) and leverages DTCC’s systems management infrastructure.   DTCC provides sophisticated data center management, including ambient environmental control, air quality, power and fire suppression capabilities.  Each system contains redundant components to prevent the system from failing as well as dual monitoring systems to actively check the health of each individual component.  

For ultra-high availability, Omgeo CTM is provisioned with fully redundant systems both within and between data centers. Locally within a production data center, the systems are configured in resilient clusters. Additionally, the production environment is entirely mirrored at DTCC’s alternate data center with processing traffic load balanced across both locations.  Omgeo manages the recovery of the processing environment using proven recovery protocols and procedures.  

3.   In the event of a disaster, does Omgeo have a business continuity plan prepared for Omgeo CTM?

Yes. Omgeo has prepared a comprehensive business continuity plan, including both technical and business procedures, to ensure minimum business interruption should any software, hardware, or communications link fail. 
 
4.   How does Omgeo provide high availability of Omgeo CTM in the production environment?

Omgeo CTM is configured with redundant components in an active-active configuration. Processing is load balanced across dual nodes and, in the event of a failure of an individual system, processing is redirected to the surviving node with little or no interruption of service. In most cases, recovery will be transparent to clients.

5.   In the event that Omgeo’s main production facilities are disabled, what measures are in place to ensure availability to Omgeo CTM?

Omgeo CTM’s processing environment is fully mirrored at an alternate data center built and managed by DTCC.  Omgeo’s proven fail-over and recovery procedures will restore service to clients with minimal disruption to trade confirmation, settlement and notification workflow.

6.   What types of disruptions would precipitate a recovery of production operations at the alternate site?

The alternate data center will be used whenever our main production facilities are rendered inoperative.  Any incident that impairs or destroys the Omgeo CTM processing environment, data or network center, the power supply at the main production facility or in the wide-area network (WAN) would precipitate a fail-over to the alternate site.  Examples of disruptions are fires, explosions, floods, earthquakes or other natural or man-made disasters and various device failures.   

7.   What types of recovery procedures are in place to activate the alternate site?

The application code, infrastructure configuration, and trade database are replicated at the alternate site and  kept continuously in sync with the primary site, ensuring that systems are always production ready. In the event the primary Omgeo CTM systems are disabled, the backup host systems are activated simply by enabling the synchronized copy of the production database and restarting the applications. Client networks are load-balanced across each of the data centers, so no network fail-over procedures are required to activate the recovery site. Similarly, all operations systems are kept live and actively managing the host and network infrastructure even prior to the disaster, so no recovery procedures are required to enable operations at the alternate site.

Omgeo’s plan for activating the recovery plan is an extension of a long-standing, widely used and tightly managed problem escalation process.  Omgeo’s business and technology teams are fully prepared to execute the plan when the need arises.

8.   In the event of a disruption, how long will it take for fail-over to occur?  When will full operations with the service resume?  

Omgeo's business continuity plan establishes a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 2 hours during which time systems are failed-over to the alternate production facility and the recovery environment is brought online and operating as the production environment. Once this has occurred, clients will be able to resume full operations with Omgeo CTM immediately.  

9.   What impact will business resumption have on system availability?

Our business continuity plan will have minimal impact on your business with Omgeo.  Connectivity to the alternate site is seamless through automatic rerouting of all communications traffic.  To ensure optimum availability, the alternate site is kept 100% production ready at all times. Omgeo will continue this practice to maintain the highest levels of business recovery capability.

10.  How will clients access the recovery environment?  

The fail-over and recovery process involves four steps: (1) the networks are disabled to prevent accidental delivery of trade data to the failed environment; (2) the fully synchronized databases at the alternate location are brought online, restarted, and checked for data integrity; (3) the Omgeo CTM applications are restarted to utilize the live databases; and (4) the networks are re-enabled to establish connectivity from the clients.   

11. Does Omgeo’s business continuity program support my leased line connection? 

Yes. A client’s leased line connections are supported with no modifications to the client's network configuration.  

12. What type of infrastructure is used to store client trade information and replicate it to the business resumption site?

Client data in the databases are replicated in real time using remote disk mirroring technology, so a copy of your data resides at the alternate site at all times. 

13. Does Omgeo conduct tests of its recovery site and recovery processes?

Yes. Omgeo conducts recovery exercises twice annually.  Omgeo CTM recovery procedures have been designed and tested to resume full operations within the RTO of two hours. 

14. What types of client support services will Omgeo provide in the event of a disruption at the primary data center?

While resuming technical operations, Omgeo will provide additional support services from other office locations globally.  Support services include a Client Support Center toll-free phone number and e-mail capabilities to facilitate communication between clients and Omgeo's support staff. 

15. Will client support staff be available in the event of a disruption at the Omgeo business office?
  
Yes. Client support staff is available at other Omgeo office locations globally, enabling Omgeo to provide seamless, best-of-class client support operations.

16. As a client, should I prepare a business continuity plan for my Omgeo CTM service?

Yes. As a client, it is critical to have a business continuity plan for your systems at your data center that is fully integrated with Omgeo CTM. A comprehensive business continuity plan will ensure minimum business interruption and will provide protection for your trade flow in the event of a disaster at your site. 

17. Is Omgeo taking any additional steps to ensure the highest levels of business recovery capability?