OpenMAMA Creates Advisory Group, Seeks Vendors for Steering Committee

The move follows months of speculation surrounding the future of OpenMAMA, after Intercontinental Exchange sold the Wombat business and MAMA API to low-latency feed handler and ticker plant vendor SR Labs last year, following its 2013 acquisition of NYSE Euronext, whose NYSE Technologies business acquired Wombat in 2008 and open-sourced its API layer in 2012.

The OpenMAMA project is governed by the OpenMAMA Steering Committee-which oversees the development roadmap and governance of the initiative and comprises JP Morgan, SR Labs, Tick42 and Solace Systems, which joined this year-and a technical committee, which is responsible for implementing the roadmap devised by the Steering Committee.

However, OpenMAMA has now introduced a new advisory group-comprised of five tier-one investment banks, one of which uses OpenMAMA in production, and two of which are evaluating the API layer-that can now input directly into the OpenMAMA roadmap and project direction without any formal commitments to the project.

The advisory group will operate adjacent to the Steering Committee, insofar as that it will have access to many of the same meetings, though it will not have direct influence over the Steering Committee's final decisions, says Jamie Hill, vice president of product management at SR Labs and OpenMAMA Steering Committee co-ordinator.

"One of the asks we typically encounter when we pitch OpenMAMA to tier-one banks is before they adopt OpenMAMA or contribute, they want to get involved with the governance," Hill says. "However, some firms are reluctant to contribute to open-source projects, or market data managers might love the concept but they don't want to make a formal commitment early on. What's going to drive the project forward is participation from users... so we wanted a way for financial firms who represent the users to get involved without having to make that initial formal commitment," he adds.

As its first act, the advisory group will be working with the Steering Committee on OpenMAMA's development roadmap for the rest of this year, including a generic entitlement API that will enable banks to use any entitlement system, as opposed to be being locked-in to any specific vendor's system.

Meanwhile, the OpenMAMA Steering Committee is embarking on an effort to entice other vendors to get involved with the project-which Hill says has seen a recent increase in downloads of the API by the developer community and participation from vendors such as ticker plant provider Exegy-by waiving any fees to join the Steering Committee for the next 12-month period.