Chatting all things FusionFabric.cloud with Pierre Quémard, Innovation Consultant at Finastra

Pierre Quémard discusses his experimentation with FusionFabric.cloud and how it simplifies multi-cloud development — he includes his thoughts on why the platform economy is inevitable in financial services.

Mitesh: Pierre, thank you for joining me today. To get started, please explain your role at Finastra.

Pierre: I provide pre-sales implementation support to Finastra customers which include banks and other financial services organizations.

Mitesh: What kind of coding experience do you have?

Pierre: I’m not working as a developer today, but I do have prior experience in developing back-end systems.

Mitesh: Did you previously build production systems using a low-code platform?

Pierre: I had not used one before FusionFabric.cloud. I was introduced to an early version of the platform and started playing around with it. I was really surprised by its simplicity and efficiency.

Mitesh: Did you end up writing any apps?

Pierre: Yes. The first app I created displayed a report for a client presentation. I posted the app on our internal GitHub and other people began using it right away. It’s evolved. We’ve integrated other APIs with it and added more complex features that display pre-trade and post-trade compliance rules.

I create apps almost daily now, especially as a part of a demo. A fun one I recently created, parses loan documents using IBM Watson pattern recognition.

Mitesh: Great. Can I ask how long it took to build the first version?

Pierre: With the learning curve, it took around a week.

Mitesh: Ok that was quick, can you give me some more details?

Pierre: Yes. With FusionFabric.cloud, you can build an app without writing a single line of code. The platform provides a number of low code tools including an orchestration service that’s based on Node-RED, an ETL service and an OLAP cube service. There are also open APIs for Finastra applications, data chunks based on real customer data and a UXP component.

Mitesh: What a change from traditional development processes! Are there other challenges that this platform solves for developers?

Pierre: Binding components has never been this easy. The UXP service provides a lot of flexibility, but it also ensures that all applications have a consistent interface. PaaS options supported by Microsoft Azure such as in-memory processing and GPU services enable native parallel processing, so OLAP cubes slice and dice data extremely quickly.

Also, when developers work across multiple clouds, security and authentication are almost always issues. Even if everything supports OAUTH2 or SAMLv2, the connectivity can be cumbersome to set up. Luckily with FusionFabric.cloud, people with accounts are directly linked to Finastra’s SSO, so users can collaborate without having to get additional credentials.

Mitesh: Excellent. What about debugging?

Pierre: Debugging on a low code platform is always an interesting challenge. As long as the behaviour of the back-end API is clear, then printing information at the right time is usually enough. It can be trickier with less reliable APIs.

Mitesh: Will any of your apps be available in the FusionStore?

Pierre: Mine need to be validated by our app dev team, so I’m not sure. I hope so!

Mitesh: Do you see FusionFabric.cloud changing how the industry develops products going forward?

Pierre: Definitely. The platform ecosystem is the future of deployment. It enables such convenience for the user that it is inevitable.

Being able to reuse tools that other people develop instead of reinventing the wheel in every project also saves tremendous time. A good example is Twilio. If you need to add messaging to your app, you can use Twilio’s open APIs and do it at a fraction of the cost of a “heavy solution.”

My advice for developers today? For every problem or question you currently have with your system, there must be someone already providing an open API that can help in some way. Be curious and open. This usually brings the most innovative and efficient solution.

Mitesh: Thanks Pierre. It’s been great to learn more about how FusionFabric.cloud is helping to drive this industry transformation.