According to sources, the deal was finalised on July 1 and the contract is expected to be inked by the end of this week. According to market sources, CMC and Compu Share, an Australia-based software vendor, were the other companies in the race for the project.

While the online service providers have already put such a system in place at the Bangalore Stock Exchange, top BSE officials have insisted that a few more features be added to this system based on the Business Requirement Specification (BRS) prepared by Prof Atkins of Australia.

"The vendor has promised to introduce the system on BSE's platform by mid- July on a trial and error basis. "However, the system will be fully operational by the end of September," explained a top BSE official.

Sources highlighted that the system has been designed keeping intoconsideration the need for both stock-related alerts and broker-related alerts.

Moreover, since the BSE has a carryforward system in place, the system will also be required to introduce the necessary features which would help the exchange monitor the badla positions of the brokers on an on-line basis.It may be recalled that former BSE president MG Damani had categorically stated that the current financial crisis and the problems which occured at the exchange were on account of the absence of an online surveillance mechanism.

The top officials of BSE had also maintained that things went wrong on the exchange on account of certain members exceeding their gross exposure limits. They had also unitedly committed that the exchange would work on improvising the risk-management system by introducing an on-line surveillance mechanism.

The Inter-surveillance group of Sebi which met in May had also asked both BSE and NSE to switch over to the online surveillance system which would form an essential part of theexchanges' governance.

Interestingly, while BSE had appointed Prof Atkins to prepare the extensive BRS way back in January, the process for the implementation of the same had turned slow on account of the exchange's attempt to get the best bid in terms of the cost of project.