Open-source
Open Platform: The Front Office in the Cloud
The need to cut costs without compromising client service and business performance is putting tremendous pressure on businesses, spurring them to evaluate their internal processes and consider moving some of these to a managed services model. The past…
Time to Ditch the Spreadsheets
The IT function, which spends somewhere between 2 and 5 percent of a company’s revenues—as much as $5 billion in some large financial services companies—still produces managerial accounting, budgeting, planning, and performance reporting on spreadsheets…
Open Platform: The Data-Centric Approach
As institutions seek to generate alpha in a low-interest rate environment, there has been an explosion in the types of investments firms are engaging in, including derivatives and alternatives. As a result, many front-office solutions providers have…
Open Platform: Assembling the Big Data Puzzle
Harnessing the potential of Big Data will require financial firms to invest in a combination of solutions that include unstructured data analytics, visualization tools, cloud compute and storage, along with a full understanding of the challenges that…
Open Platform: Short Sighted on Short Selling
Today, the ban on short selling in the European Union comes into force. It will have potentially harmful effects on market quality, while producing few benefits.
Open Platform: How to Tackle Digital Investigations
Internal investigations, underpinned by a unified investigations solution, can help financial services firms meet the demands of multiple regulations and frameworks. By Frank Coggrave
Open Platform: Index Data License Spend's ‘Period of Enlightenment'
Index licensing is an area of rising cost and complexity that firms with investments linked to specific indexes cannot easily escape. But many are ignoring tools and practices already in use for managing real-time data, impacting their ability to control…
Open Platform: The Evolution of the Smart Broker
The past couple of years have seen broad structural changes to the world’s financial markets, which have resulted in a permanent and profound shift in the role and operating environment of sell-side firms. James Blackburn discusses how success can no…
Open Platform: Don’t Get ‘Owned’ By Data Ownership
The future of financial firms’ market data organizations will be defined by effective governance of external data and proprietary prices. But lack of standards and myriad disparate policies is creating opacity, confusion and potential liabilities, says…
Open Platform: A Risk-Intelligent Bank?
In a period of heightened regulation resulting from the financial crisis, banks are facing more intense scrutiny than ever. History dictates that regulators will always be behind the curve, taking a reactive approach to risk management. With this in mind…
Open Platform: When Applying for Opportunities, Find Opportunities to Apply Relationships
The job market for financial technology and data experts is improving as market forces create new opportunities. However, individuals seeking to capitalize on any upswing must be ready to approach the job hunt in new ways and understand how their talents…
Open Platform: Big Data, Minus Big Delays or Big Storage
With data volumes constantly rising, and firms looking to apply Big Data analytics to gain value from even more datasets, is there such a thing as too much data? Speed requirements and storage limitations demand a smarter choice for capturing Big Data,…
Open Platform: To Avoid Indecent Exposures, Go Big (Data) or Go Home
Managing risk exposure requires a wealth of market and position data, and the ability to monitor it effectively. Firms have this data, but may still be exposed to catastrophic risk if they don’t have sufficient data capacity and analytical processing…
Recording Regs Add to Big Data Burden
UK-based financial institutions have been subjected to increased regulatory scrutiny as the FSA now requires them to record and archive all SMS and voice communications. Paul Metcalfe explains how this requirement has exacerbated firms' Big Data…
Open Platform: Heading for the Cloud
The cloud has been around for sufficient time for its presence to have permeated every technology-reliant industry vertical. But as Hani Suleiman explains, the financial services industry is way behind the curve in terms of its adoption and must get its…
Open Platform: Cloud Is the New Normal
The rise in popularity of the cloud—especially across the buy side where asset managers are looking to do more with less, while simultaneously shrinking their technology spending—has been nothing short of astronomic. A recent TowerGroup forecast predicts…
Open Platform: Shining a Light onto ‘Dark’ Markets with Market-Derived Fixed Income Data
While market forces and regulation have led to transparency and high availability of market data for many asset classes, many aspects of the over-the-counter fixed income markets remain opaque, with market data either unreliable or incomplete. To…
Open Platform: How Data Can Open Doors to New Business Models for Exchanges
As competition for their traditional home turf heats up, exchanges must leverage their position as central liquidity venues to become conduits to market data and execution beyond their domestic markets—or risk someone else doing it, says Chris Pickles,…
Open Platform: The Real Cost of In-House Analytics
In the current economic environment, when it comes to analytics, the buy-versus-build debate should be a no-brainer, says Martin Stevens, director of professional services and support at UK-based pricing software vendor Kalahari.
Open Platform: Low-Latency Drive Leads to New Data Challenges for CEP
For firms seeking to perform data management and aggregation to create custom consolidated feeds and the high-performance analytics required to generate alpha in a challenging economy, CEP and high-performance tick databases offer a compelling…
Business Continuity in the Cloud
The cloud offers enhanced IT service availability and flexibility, but customers need to understand their responsibilities in order to achieve this. By Mike Small
The Case for Automation
IT teams are faced with supporting systems that facilitate high-speed trading where huge amounts of money hang in the balance. Overlooking even the smallest hiccup can bring the whole infrastructure to its knees. How can these increasingly complex…
Cloud Computing's Critical Mass
Cloud computing is having a profound impact on society. Although relatively slow to adopt this technology—mainly due to security fears—more investment management firms are turning to the cloud to achieve scale, cut costs and improve client communication…
Open Platform: Social Media as Market Data
Capital markets have much to gain from incorporating social media data into investment strategies, but must apply the same critical sourcing criteria as they would to other forms of market data, says Seth McGuire, director of asset management and…