A collaborative approach spells opportunity for all

A collaborative approach spells opportunity for all

In this blog, Pierre Quémard, an Innovation Lead at Finastra explains why open technologies are the way forward in financial services, and how the collaborative community enabled by FusionFabric.cloud supports legacy as well as unprecedented levels of innovation.

We know from psychology and political science that connected communities are healthier than isolated environments. And breaking free from closed systems can be extremely difficult without a clear path forward.

We are experiencing this lesson and transformation in a relatively new way with technology. Thirty years ago, companies built their businesses on proprietary technologies. APIs were closed to protect revenue. However, this model limited innovation—in both business and IT—because it created and perpetuated islands of excellence, and encouraged separate business silos.

Siloed systems and data using closed APIs restricts communication and collaboration. Developers end up spending the majority of their time on maintenance. They must also create custom, redundant services for individual applications and systems and are unable to take advantage of all the ready-made services available through open-source communities.

To overcome these challenges, Finastra created a solution that gives more than 9,000 financial services organizations a pathway from their legacy systems to open technologies. FusionFabric.cloud is a Cloud Collaboration Platform based on standardized technologies. It uses REST APIs—Following Open AI Specification (e.g. Swagger 2.0)—to enable connectivity to Finastra’s extensive suite of applications and systems.

Within the platform’s development environment, you can take advantage of PaaS architecture based on open technology such as:

  • A Column Storage Mechanism powered by Redis
  • GPU Pricing using simple scripting environment
  • A flexible Document Store with In-memory data management tool is based on Red Hat JBoss Data Grid
  • Flow-based orchestration tool is based on Node-RED for the Front-End and Streamset for the back-end

The UI development tool is based on AngularJS and powered by Node.js. FusionFabric.cloud is also building a community through its FusionStore. It connects Finastra’s customers with global developers. So, anyone can now develop an app or service that works with Finastra applications and systems.

Why is this significant for developers? Those who are working at fintechs and financial services companies can finally collaborate with a global community on solutions that interact with the existing systems banks have in place. So instead of always having to develop dedicated solutions for individual silos, they can first check the FusionStore and see if someone else has developed an app with an open API that solves all or part of their challenge. They can also create apps with open APIs for use by others or for altruistic purposes and revenue.

What does this mean for financial services organizations? Not only can they can keep using their existing legacy systems, but they can innovate directly on top of them. The opportunities enabled by FusionFabric.cloud also remove the pressing need to rip and replace these systems, so they control the pace of their digital journey.

Also, they’re now able to tap into all the IT creativity and innovation that’s happening in other industries. That’s because developers will no longer require specialized knowledge about the proprietary APIs and technologies supporting their legacy systems.

This is significant. One of my favourite quotes says, “99% of banking innovation has not been created at your bank. It's created outside." Yes, innovation happens in a closed system but at a much slower pace compared with an open one. Studies show that some of the best solution ideas come from people from analogous fields—fields that are different from each other but the same on some structural level. So, a developer who works on genomic data models may be able to help a hedge fund manager who needs to uncover patterns in data. Or a retail developer might offer new perspectives on how to manage transaction processing.

In today’s web-scale world, customers expect modern services. They’re looking for the next best app. By providing an open platform for use by all developers as well as students, FusionFabric.cloud gives financial services organizations and developers opportunities for innovation that are only possible via collaboration. Don’t spend time finding the talent, let the talent comes directly to you.

Pierre is a technologist journeyman on his path to master craftsmanship in the Financial sector with 10+ years of experience. He has worked on different size and shape financial institutions across the globe from small hedge fund in Hongkong to the biggest sovereign fund in China through multi-billion asset manager in NYC. His responsibilities spanned from pre-sales to customer advocacy through time critical implementation enabling strong understanding of technological challenges in this sector. He has recently positioned his technological acumen towards helping Financial Institution, Integrators, FinTech and Student to all collaborate on an innovative platform.

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