Colombo Stock Exchange's Internet enabled operations will be rolled out in stages. In the first stage Affno will be designing an informational website for the Colombo Stock Exchange which will contain up to date information and graphical representations of each trading day, with detailed market information on specific companies.

The second phase will include highly advanced software applications with dynamic graphical generation of market information. This would enable the Colombo Stock Exchange to disseminate real-time market information over the Internet. This phase will be designed, built and commissioned by Affno within the next six months. Affno's CEO Suren Kannangara said: "This is a significant milestone for Affno and an endorsement of our world-class mission critical software engineering capabilities for building large e-business solutions".

Commenting on this project, Colombo Stock Exchange's Director-General Hiran Mendis said: "The Internet is the most cost effective method of disseminating market information. We want to encourage greater numbers of people to participate in the Stock Market and the provision of easy access to market information will play an important role in this respect."

On completion of the second phase, the Colombo Stock Exchange will offer real-time market information to subscribers with several value-added benefits. As such, subscribers will be able to create their own portfolios and track their price and other trading movements with real-time automatic valuation of their portfolios. The general public who do not need to subscribe for real-time information will also have access to a limited range of information with a 20-minute time delay.

"We have thought of the various groups of prospective investors. As such we have functionalities tailor-made to endear our Internet solution to each of these groups. For instance, we have features such as multi-currency converters. Such features will be useful for attracting our very own Sri Lankans living overseas to actively trade in the Colombo stock market," Colombo Stock Exchange Senior Manager marketing and Public Relations Rajeewa Bandaranaike said.

SLT's Head of Marketing Group Setsuya Kimura said: "SLT will be launching a state-of-the-art data centre offering the largest capacity and bandwidth shortly. This data centre will provide the ideal hosting infrastructure for mission critical, highly advanced software solutions such as this one that Affno is building for the Colombo Stock Exchange."