Job Title: Financial Information Systems Intern
Employer: New York Stock Exchange
Dates: 09/2000 - 12/200

Undoubtedly, the knowledge and experience gained from doing an internship at the New York Stock Exchange is invaluable. Talking to individuals who are actively involved in the field of Information Technology, was one of the best ways to test my skills and interest in that field. The internship at the NYSE gave offer me the unique opportunity to apply what I have been learning for the past three years in college. It is no secret that more and more employers are making hiring decisions based on demonstrated career-related experience during the college years. Completing an internship at NYSE has provided me with the real-world experience I need to successfully attain a full-time job in IT.

Working at the New York Stock Exchange- the world's largest equities market- gave me the opportunity to work with established professionals who are leaders in their fields. Similar to any other organization, the New York Stock Exchange has assets and liabilities, expenses and revenues. The Financial Information Systems/Controllers Department at the New York Stock Exchange has the major responsibility of identifying, recording, analyzing and reporting the company's financial information. For a company the size and magnitude of the New York Stock Exchange, accounting information becomes vitally important in helping predict future performance, showing where and when money has been spent, indicating the financial status of the company.

The Financial Information Systems Department is using a variety of software packages to help controllers/accountants accomplish their difficult mission.

SAP (Systems, Applications and Products in Data Processing) is a great enterprise software package and there is virtually nothing it cannot do. As the concept of client/server has become very popular, SAP provides an exquisite set of business applications especially designed for the client/server environment. Using SAP in a big corporation like the New York Stock Exchange allows for a more connected business environment in such a way that a change in one area of the business will reflect on another area of the business. For example, payroll monies in the Human Resources module is also linked to the general ledger monies in the Financial module. SAP can use different brand names databases to support the SAP system such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server and DB2/CS. The Financial Information Systems Department at the New York Stock Exchange uses an Oracle8i database, located on a Hewlett Packard mainframe computer. Oracle's Relational Database, which the world's first to support the Structured Query Language (Structured Query Language), is today an industry standard.

It has also been a great pleasure to work with two of the finest operating systems available in the market, Unix and Linux. UNIX is an operating system that originated at Bell Labs in 1969. Although UNIX was developed by programmers for programmers, it provides an environment so powerful and flexible that it is found in businesses, sciences, academia, a nd industry. UNIX operating system is widely used in the New York Stock Exchange on workstation products from Sun Microsystems, Hewlett Packard and IBM. Linux, a UNIX derivative, is also increasing in popularity in the Financial Information Systems Department with RedHat 6.2Pro recently installed on several workstations. I believe that the Unix operating system is one of the finest choices in the market. It is powerful, stable, and because of its open source nature, it is completely customizable to the company's needs.

In addition to SAP and Unix, I had the opportunity to work with another great software product, Novell's Netware 5.1. Novell, Inc is a leading provider of Network services software that powers all types of networks-intranets, the Internet and extranets; corporate and public; wired to wireless -across leading operating systems. NetWare 5.1, used by the New York Stock Exchange, is the most widely-installed network server operating system (NOS). NetWare 5.1 is based on open standards providing fast, secure, and efficient integration between the NYSE corporate network and the Internet. The NetWare Client for Windows NT allows NYSE employees to integrate their Windows NT workstation with the NetWare network. Using NetWare Client for Windows NT, they are able to use and manage a NetWare network, performing tasks such as printing to the network printers, managing files over the network, and managing servers and other network resources.

The internship at the New York Stock Exchange has provided me with the unique opportunity to learn more about the ever-growing field of Information Technology, work with the latest technologies and upgrade my professional growth.