Developers Combine To Deliver Open Source Trading System

Professional services company dbConcert has chosen three companies to piece together an open source-based trading system to help users better manage their businesses and make wiser investment decisions.

The solution, based on open source products from Ingres, Marketcetera, and Pentaho, reportedly has many of the same features of competing solutions that use proprietary software but will cost significantly less.

"The days of the $5 million projects are over," said Stephen Ferrando, CEO of dbConcert. "No CIO has space in his budget to write that check now. People are looking to open source to continue to innovate, to continue with new projects, without writing a bigger check."

Detailing components of the trading system, Ferrando said his company took Marketcetera's recently launched trading platform and married it to Pentaho's business intelligence software and Ingres' database; dbConcert built the products on Eclipse.

The solution should enable users to not only execute orders electronically, but also to track order flow, analyze their market positions, and continually monitor profit and loss.

Company officials believe the system has a good chance to succeed. The recession is hamstringing the way larger enterprises conduct business, forcing them to look for more cost-effective solutions. But it also is leveling the playing field for smaller companies looking for new ways to compete through more innovative approaches.

A pure open source solution, dbConcert believes, not only reduces its initial costs, but prevents lock-in from proprietary vendors and makes it easier to customize the basic platform for things such as order and risk management.

"I think our partners can better innovate with this solution and so, better address clear market needs using an integrated solution that fits with the realities of their clients' 2009 IT budgets," said Lars Nordwall, senior VP of business development at Pentaho, in a statement.

There's a precedent that could foreshadow the new solution's success. In the early 1990s, company officials note, the Financial Information Exchange protocol was introduced. FIX, which is still in operation today, was offered free to users and evolved to become the governing standard for electronic communications in the trading area.

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