Knourek: After 2000, IT Will Serve Up Connectivity To Internet Consumers

The biggest trend I can see is that almost every trading firm in today's financial markets is rapidly adopting distributed systems technology.

A typical financial institution has tens, if not hundreds, of custom-built and packaged applications that consume and provide information. To solve an issue like Y2K or to deliver a new product requires significant data and applications integration.

Key to finding a solution is the ability to build large-scale, distributed systems that can integrate legacy data and applications, respond quickly to changing requirements and provide a high level of automation for management of the distributed environment.

One of our most interesting projects combines our TIBMercury FX and our TIB/ActiveEnterprise.

On this project, we worked with a large international bank to customize and deploy a Java-based, client trading solution over the Internet. The framework allows the bank to offer foreign exchange transactions directly to customers over the Internet, in a fully authenticated and secure environment. In addition, we leveraged the integration capabilities of the TIB/ActiveEnterprise solutions suite to connect the auto-dealing software with the legacy and other custom-built systems already in place at the bank.

Our work with Nasdaq: Initially deployed to improve throughput and efficiency among Nasdaq's internal systems, TIB/ActiveEnterprise will be used to create a giant messaging hub, connecting screen-based traders and third-party data vendors. Rather than creating and broadcasting multiple copies of the same message, Nasdaq will use Tibco's reliable IP multicasting technology to push out a single update for efficient replication over the Nasdaq network.

The biggest challenge is preparation and quality assurance for Y2K- and EMU-compliant software. Today, Tibco has already completed and released compliant versions of all our software, and we are now working closely with our clients to help deploy them.

Beyond 2000, the major challenge facing IT will be to achieve fast time to market for new products and value-added services that will be offered to the clients of a financial enterprise. These customer connectivity solutions will be driven by the demands of the emerging "Internet consumer." These "Internet consumers" may be the retail customers of a banking or brokerage operation, or the corporate treasurer of a large trading company.

On the platform side, Microsoft Windows NT will continue to dominate the desktop, while Unix and mainframe computers continue to provide the server infrastructure. Increasingly, component and distributed object technology will dominate the software infrastructure arena, which will bring with it an increasing number of issues related to the integration of computing frameworks such as Java, EJBs, COM+, MTS and Corba.

There will be continuing frustration in the development community related to browser incompatibilities and differing implementations of standards such as Dynamic HTML (DHTML) or self-describing representations such as XML. Many shops will develop and deploy Java applications directly onto the desktop. In the network, we will see the widespread adoption of Gigabit Ethernet. Data vendors will begin to publish meta-models that allow software to easily represent and navigate their information. The Internet will be reliable and secure for most communications and will continue to replace the private networks. Wireless technology and applications that leverage it will become commonplace.

The only real issue is the extent to which a firm's business and IT organizations share and agree on a common vision.

Pre-empting and keeping up with the current business drivers and ensuring that we meet the new requirements before they occur.