I think this says more about their business than their deployment process. It might be a good rule of thumb to say, "If your business can lose $400M in 45 minutes, you're not in business, you're playing poker."
Many businesses can lose that much or more in a very short time if something goes wrong, by destruction of product, damage to equipment, or damage to environment. Software can be responsible for all of these.
The second YF-22 was killed by a software error. That was plenty expensive, I'm sure, then again, that's why in peacetime we build and thoroughly exercise test aircraft before starting production.
From the article, which even has a Wikipedia link to market maker:
"Knight Capital Group is an American global financial services firm engaging in market making, electronic execution, and institutional sales and trading."
Institutions and other big entities buy and sell stocks, in huge quantities. Someone has to execute these trades, and doing it electronically is infinitely faster and more efficient, and usually less error prone. And the platforms for doing this are therefore very "powerful".
But "With great power comes great responsibility", and this company was manifestly grossly irresponsible on many levels, it was likely only a matter of time before something like this would kill them.
those companies exist for one reason... in the past there were rules so people dont send money to the wrong place in the stock exchange. those brokers and speed traders got ahead of everyone by bypassing those safeties with little refard for safety. the only sad part in this history is that it still havent haooened to all of them.
