Symphony Software Foundation (the Foundation), the nonprofit organization fostering innovation in financial services through open source software (OSS), continues to build on its 2016 growth, paving the path for a new fintech innovation model based on secure and compliant open collaboration.
Less than 20 months from its inception, the Foundation now counts more than 50 projects, 100 plus contributors, four active working groups, and 25 member organizations as part of the Symphony ecosystem; successes which lead to a notable Annual Members Meeting. For a full update on the State of the Source, read Peter Monks latest blog post.
New Fintech Members Broaden Technology Spectrum
Since then, four new fintech organizations signed on as Silver Members: Arcontech, BankEX, Cloud9 Technologies and FinTech Studios. With these new members experience in financial market data solutions, distributed ledger technology, voice trading and AI technologies, the Foundation continues to broaden the fintech diversity of its community.
Gabriele Columbro, executive director, Symphony Software Foundation said, When done right, open source enables a degree of innovation which is simply not possible in proprietary development or solution-time collaboration models like open APIs or open standards. The growth of our community shows how these strategic benefits can outweigh legal, technical and frankly cultural aspects preventing effective innovation in financial services technology. We see our Foundation as the proven-to-be-trusted environment where fintech producers and consumers can collaborate on open source, industry-grade standard solutions, sparking innovation on common and new use cases that have the potential of reshaping Wall Street.
Matthew Jeffs, CEO, Arcontech, said, Arcontech is very happy to join the Symphony Software Foundation. Communication and community is the very essence of the financial marketplace. The combination of Symphony and Arcontech as a provider of real-time market data solutions makes perfect sense. Working with the Foundation will allow us to contribute our knowledge in the processing and management of real-time market data whilst significantly enhancing our highly performant, vendor-agnostic desktop solutions to present a truly viable alternative to traditional market data terminals.
Igor Khmel, founder, BankEx, said, BankEx joins the Symphony Software Foundation to be part of a global collaboration effort to establish open standards in new type of assets origination and trading, while leveraging the last generation of bank-as-a-service fintech and distributed ledger technology, bringing real assets to crypto currencies and crypto-assets to capital markets.
German Soto Sanchez, global head of corporate development, Cloud9 Technologies, said, Cloud9 joins the Symphony Software Foundation in the spirit of fostering open communication, interoperability, and innovation in the financial services community. Our mission is to eliminate the complexity and hassle of traditional trader voice solutions while delivering services that are inherently more reliable, less expensive and of higher quality across enterprises. We believe collaborating with like-minded innovators is the key to modernizing communications.”
Kevin Barresi, CTO, FinTech Studios, said, FinTech Studios joins the Symphony Software Foundation because we believe in building an open, collaborative community of industry leaders around next-generation technologies, products, and workflows. We see the Foundation as one of the top groups leading this charge, and are excited to join ranks with other members to bring a positive change in this space.
Unlocking open source for financial services
Recent research from Black Ducks Center for Open Source Research and Innovation (COSRI) shows that between 80 percent and 90 percent of the code in todays applications is open source. While the audit confirms universal use, it also reveals the ineffectiveness in addressing risks related to open source security vulnerabilities and license compliance challenges.
This is precisely where our Foundation provides value – by offering a secure and IP compliant, open source developer experience and software supply chain, while maintaining the high productivity typical of modern, open source communities and workflows, said Peter Monks, VP of technology, Symphony Software Foundation. After adding OpenShift support, we plan to continue investing in our Open Development Platform (our open source development reference-model), to provide our community with a shared, secure and compliant tool chain that can power open source collaboration.
With this vision in mind, the Foundation is hosting its inaugural Open Source Strategy Forum in New York on November 8. The one-day conference is open to executive-level decision makers and senior technologists from financial services seeking to drive industry innovation through open source.
