According to CMC chairman and managing director Ramesh P Jhunjhunwala, it has taken the company about 150 man years to develop the one million lines of code of CDAS.

Company officials say the software will be implemented in four phases. "While the first phase is plain dematerialisation, the second phase includes the full functionality of a depository. The third and fourth phases are still at an conceptualisation stage as it consists of modules like interconnecting two depositories," said Jhunjhunwala. While CMC is developing and implementing the software at around Rs 6 crore, it has already sourced the hardware and other requirements at an estimated Rs 14 crore.

The software is based on open architecture andcan be implemented on any version of UNIX. It used Oracle as its database and uses Windows NT as its front-end, which has been developed Microsoft Visual Basic. According to CMC officials, the software will be able to meet the incremental needs of the depository and will not have any bottlenecks for at least the next five years. CMC had earlier developed and implemented the trading software at the BSE when the exchange decided to computerise its operations. That software was, however, not based on open architecture and used propreitary technology.

The company has subsequently implemented the same software for the Calcutta Stock Exchange and developed a low-cost trading software, which has been implemented in about 10 smaller stock exchanges.