I might be overstating this, but tremors of a tectonic shift are beginning to ripple in the capital markets, stemming from the desktop application interoperability movement. If I’m right, the trader interface is going to radically change—and I know, I know, you’ve heard this before—but this time is different. The mechanisms of change, taken as a whole, represent a true revolution, even if the technologies are, themselves, old.

First, there’s this vast sea of data that’s growing every day—see: