Intel, the world’s largest computer chipmaker and a leading manufacturer of personal computers, networking and communication products, and the National Stock Exchange, India’s leading technology-driven stock exchange, signed a significant agreement today. The agreement was signed by Dr. Craig Barrett, the legendary president and chief executive officer of the US giant and Dr. R.H. Patil, the moving force behind the NSE.

Under the terms of this agreement, the US giant will provide Intel architecture based servers to NSE for the launch of its "Brokers Plaza" – an Internet based trading site that will enable brokers and retail investors trade in securities listed on India’s stock exchanges. NSE has invested over Rs. 25 crore in this project and will commercially launch this project in two months time.

NSE is to launch the service through its newly created joint venture between NSE.IT, the information technology arm of NSE and iflex Solutions, a subsidiary of Citibank in India. The Brokers Plaza is positioned to provide trading services for the brokerage community, thus paving the way for online trading facilities to a large retail base. The Plaza will be powered by Intel servers for which the US company will provide technology expertise, lab infrastructure for scaling, testing and its architectural expertise to NSE.

The Plaza will deploy a cluster of Intel Pentium III Xeon processor-based 8-way and 4-way servers with high availability features for mission critical applications.

Addressing a press conference, Dr. Patil expressed the exchange’s desire to expand the reach of securities trading to as many retail investors as possible, and was looking at the Plaza to provide the much needed reach.

Dr. Barrett stated that NSE’s move was in line with global trends and that Intel, which has as its mission to move towards e-commerce and e-trading activities, will ensure that the project gets the full support of the Intel India team.