Three Open Source companies for Trading Desk sol

REDWOOD CITY, USA: Three leading commercial open source companies have been selected to deliver a complete trading desk solution that gives the financial services industry a way to automate a majority of business functions done by most trading desks today.

Ingres Corporation, a leading provider of open source database management software and support services, announced today that it is part of the solution created by dbConcert, a leading professional services firm focused on delivering world-class implementations of open source software solutions, that ensures all customers get exactly what they need for a complete open source trading system.

The solution, based entirely on open source products from Ingres, Marketcetera, and Pentaho, allows organizations to manage their business effectively and make better investment decisions – all at a fraction of the cost of proprietary software vendor offerings.

"The days of the five million dollar projects are over," said Stephen Ferrando, CEO of dbConcert. "No CIO has space in his budget to write that check. People are looking to open source to continue to innovate, to continue with new projects, without writing a bigger check. No one wants to spend if they don't know it will work. Open source gives you the ability to try it out without locking yourself in to millions of dollars of payments in the coming years."

Marketcetera, an open source trading system provider, recently launched the first open source trading platform. dbConcert took the Marketcetera solution and combined business intelligence (BI) from Pentaho, and the database from Ingres to create a  complete open source solution framework built on Eclipse. The offering enables end users to execute orders electronically, track order flow, analyze market positions, and measure profit and loss. The solution was unveiled at an invitation-only event recently in New York.

"Open source technology presents a unique opportunity to the trading desk as the financial services industry is implementing significant cost reduction initiatives," said Michael O'Conor, director, Enterprise Compliance Solution, at Jordan & Jordan, who attended the event. O'Conor recalls a similar opportunity in the early 1990s with the introduction of the Financial Information Exchange (FIX) protocol. "FIX was and still is in existence today, offered at no cost to all users and, as we all know, FIX has grown to become the standard for electronic communications in the global trading space. Open Source technology provides a firm with a significantly lower cost of entry than traditional technologies servicing the trading desk."

The world and the economy are changing. Corporate budgets and belts everywhere are tightening as company executives do their best to ride out the storm of these financially uncertain times. The current economic climate is seriously impacting business as usual for enterprises around the world, but it is also leveling the playing field, creating new opportunities for success, and presenting multiple opportunities for agile businesses to innovate and thrive like never before. An open source solution that combines BI, the database, and the trading system, can significantly reduce the total cost of ownership, eliminate proprietary vendor lock-in, provide robust analytics, reporting, and document management, allow for an open interface from the user to the business, and enhance the ease of customization to meet specific user requirements in areas like order and risk management.

"The scope and maturity of open source software has expanded rapidly and it is an extremely attractive alternative to organizations looking to innovate but unable to dig any deeper into the coffers," said Roger Burkhardt, president and CEO of Ingres. "Over the last decade, the availability of mature open source solutions has moved up from Linux to cover the complete software stack, so users are no longer limited to the agenda of proprietary software companies."

"The market is increasingly choosing proven open source offerings to address high value, mission-critical applications like this," said Lars Nordwall, senior vice president of business development at Pentaho Corporation. "Our partners can innovate to address clear market needs using mature, integrated solutions with that fit with the realities of our clients' 2009 IT budgets."

"The proprietary systems of yesterday are failing to adapt to today's market conditions," said Graham Miller, CEO and co-founder of Marketcetera. "To thrive in this environment

you need a trading solution that is optimized for blazing fast strategy execution -- including price discovery from market data, signal generation using complex event processing, and fast multi-broker order routing. You don't want to waste valuable time and money building it from scratch."