By installing Heartbeat on top of TIB-based trading systems, financial services organisations can ensure that traders are immediately alerted to quality of service issues resulting from data feed outages, server crashes or network faults, says the company.

Leveraging agent technology, Heartbeat provides a clear colour-coded visual indicator on each trader’s display as to the integrity of data. Usually coloured green, a data integrity icon pulses periodically when data is up-to-date. When data feed, system or network problems occur, the icon turns first amber then red and pulses more insistently. Traders are thus provided with a relevant indicator of system health and early warning of data delivery problems.

The company claims Heartbeat is an effective solution for dial-up and WAN based users who are particularly exposed to data flow interruption. The solution has been designed to be minimally invasive and has a self-configuring installation process which leverages existing TIB configuration information.

Henry Young, director of product strategy at TS-Associates, says: "Our clients were asking how they could provide their users with a constant assurance that their real time data was current, while integrating the individual user perspectives across the whole system. We developed Heartbeat to provide that assurance."

The optional Heartbeat Server centrally integrates status reports from all Heartbeat agents, enabling system administrators to be immediately informed of any quality of service issues relating to data delivery to individual users, or system wide. Heartbeat Server can also be integrated with enterprise monitoring tools, such as TIB/Hawk.

Heartbeat also provides useful facilities for system administrators and market data support staff, including graphical views of all data sources, and a significantly improved graphical version of the TIBCO command line Tib_consume utility.