Sun has teamed up with two software companies to offer
low-cost financial information exchange (Fix) bundles for the
financial services community running on Intel-based Linux or Sun
Solaris platforms.
Fix is a messaging protocol based on XML that was developed for
the financial industry so that users could conduct securities
transactions in real-time.
David Littlewood, director of financial services for Sun, said
that Fix is becoming the de facto standard.
"The more people that use it, the easier it becomes for
different parties in the securities industry to communicate," he
said.
"So if you want to place a trade you can use a standard
messaging protocol because you can assume that the exchange at the
other end will receive messages in a Fix format."
Fix is commonly deployed by sellers, large securities firms that
conduct trades such as Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs, but the
same level of adoption has not been seen on the buyer side,
Littlewood said.
"The buyer side customer hasn't invested in technology the same
way the sell side has. They are typically looking for a lower cost
solution. They don't need the same scale and levels of throughput
the Merrill Lynches of this world require," he said.
That is why Sun has worked with two software partners - B2Bits ,
and Financial Fusion - to create low-cost Fix products, he
said.
B2Bits and Financial Fusion are competitors in the Fix market.
"They compete openly, but for the purposes of this they have both
worked with us to provide a solution, and the price for both is the
same," Littlewood said.
Rebecca Reid
writes for IDG News Service