Financial services companies have been urged to look at
how open source technologies could be used in areas of the business
where it is unnecessary to develop software
internally.
Presenting at the Linux on Wall Street conference in New York,
Jeremy Lehman, chief software architect for global equities at
Citigroup, urged businesses to find and extend the use of open
source software within the trading environment, where the
technology could be applied horizontally across industries.
Lehman said open source offered investment banks an alternative
approach to implementing IT systems. Rather than buying or building
a new system, he said open source gave users the option to extend
an existing system.
Open source software also offered an alternative to developing
software using the Java 2.0 Enterprise Edition specification, he
said.
The other main benefit, according to Lehman, was that open
source technology provided the “easiest migration from proprietary
Unix”.
Larry Tabb, chief executive at financial technology advisory
organisation Tabb Group, said, “Do not be afraid of open source
software. Leverage what is available and contribute to the
pool.”
He said using open source would benefit financial houses because
there was a large community of people testing, vetting and fixing
problems with the software. In addition, operating systems could be
optimised for the trading environment.
Tabb said open source software also enabled greater control of
the server operating system, which made it easier to customise
systems to meet business requirements.