TTooL:kit Technology is derived from Tullett’s system which itself was a distribution mechanism for Tullett’s equities prices. TTooL:kit Technology builds upon this base, however, extending functionality to deliver remote trading over the same basic architecture.

TTooL:kit Technology will power not only the Equity products (Equity:marker and GDR:marker) but other applications including Repo:marker, Eurobond:marker, Gov:marker for European government bond market and others. The complete range of these products is collectively known the Market:marker suite. An obvious and direct benefit to customers arising from our use of a normalised technology base is that establishing the infrastructure support for one TTooL:kit-based product implies that subsequent products can be rolled out with only marginal effort.

The key characteristics of the technology are:

• It uses web technology… which is is different than its being web-based.
  With this particular technological grounding, TTooL:kit uses a browser on the customer workstation, IIS web servers centrally, and IP as the network transport.
• It is built using Microsoft technologies.
  It is an inevitable consequence of this approach that the Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) is the web browser supported by TTooL:kit products. Netscape Navigator is explicitly not a supported platform, though it may work in certain situations and circumstances.
• The system relies upon central servers hosted at Tullett Prebon’s premises, and a private IP network from there to the various customer sites.
  Having said this, the system can be used via the public Internet should a customer require this. The fact that most customers use the private Tullett Prebon’s IP network is due to the security policies of our customer firms. This tendency to use private networks is not based upon any specific TTooL:kit security concern or performance issues relating to the use of the public Internet.

Market:marker Platform Technology

TTooL:kit does not present itself directly to customer end-users, though the products constructed from it manifest themselves in three visibly different ways. All of the implementations are based upon the same central architecture and systems. Generally speaking, the total TTooL:kit system is constructed in three clearly defined tiers. The system will scale to arbitrary size, and is tailored on a product-by-product basis to deliver the performance requirements demanded by each particular Tullett’s product.

Level 1
ActiveX Documents in a Visual Basic Container
The first manifestation of TTooL:kit is when the ActiveX document (with its grid, as mentioned below) is managed within a Visual Basic container. This is the richest functional form of TTooL:kit, and therefore presents the most complex end-user interface.
In this environment the facility to trade can be made available: price entry and hitting and taking of prices is allowed to some configurable extent, depending on the product using the TTooL:kit infrastructure.

Level 2
ActiveX Documents in a Browser
The next manifestation of TTooL:kit is within a browser, but in this situation the browser is a container for an ActiveX document within which prices are displayed. The ActiveX document is essentially a grid control (“TrueDB Grid Pro” from Apex Software).
The practical functionality in this instance is richer than that which can be provided by remote scripting or Java applets. This form of TTooL:kit delivery will allow a customer to construct their own product pages and track prices of specific interest drawn from a universe of thousands of instruments.

Level 3
Browser-only (:marker for the Web)
In its simplest form, a “TTooL:kit system” appears within a “standard” Internet Explorer web browser and utilises Java applets for real-time price delivery.