Windows Server’s Greatest Moment

Time to revisit the episode that totally and finally made clear that
“Windows Server” and “reliability” could never go together: the London
Stock Exchange débâcle of 2007-2011.

Microsoft made a big deal out of the fact that the LSE’s TradElect system
was built on Windows Server with DotNet, instead of using Linux. They put
out a lovely ad (which I still have a copy of) showing a fake newspaper
called “The Highly Reliable Times”, with the headline “LONDON STOCK
EXCHANGE CHOOSES WINDOWS OVER LINUX FOR RELIABILITY”. This was part of
their “Get The Facts” campaign to try to destroy Linux.

It didn’t work. The LSE suffered outage after outage, always at peak
trading times. Finally the CEO was replaced, and the new boss chucked out
the Windows servers and brought in a new system called Millennium
Exchange, built on Linux.

And they haven’t had anywhere near the same trouble since.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TradElect>