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The Case for an Open Fintech Ecosystem, Aaron Williamson
The Symphony Foundation is an open source foundation focused on financial services and fintech. It has over 60 open source repositories and 300 contributors working on projects across 4 working groups. The foundation aims to make the financial sector's culture more open by creating an open developer platform, enabling lines of business, and addressing challenges around what to open source, why to open source, and gaining buy-in from decision makers. It sees an open platform as benefiting the whole ecosystem by allowing vendors to focus on their core value while avoiding lock-in, and giving end users interoperability and the ability to customize their workflows.
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The Case for an Open Fintech Ecosystem, Aaron Williamson
- 1. @symphonyoss symphony.foundation The case foran open fintech ecosystem Aaron Williamson Director of Governance @symphonyoss symphony.foundation
- 2. ~60 Open SourceRepos 300+ Contributors 4 Working Groups 27 Member Organizations 2 Individual Members @symphonyosssymphony.foundation 4 Working Groups 27 Member Orgaizations @symphonyosssymphony.foundation An industry-wide open source foundation See live community reports at symphonyoss.biterg.io ā¢ Open source projects ā¢ Member-run working groups ā¢ Conferences, meetups, and other events ā¢ Member-directed research & advocacy
- 3. @symphonyosssymphony.foundation @symphonyosssymphony.foundation ā¢ Independence ā¢Transparent Governance ā¢ IP management ā¢ Quality & security checks TRUST GROWTHEXPERIENCE Why a dedicated open source foundation for financial services? ā¢ FinServ & FinTech focus ā¢ Tested collaboration policies & workflows ā¢ Developer experience ā¢ Community management ā¢ Network building ā¢ Events & promotion ā¢ Advising & enablement
- 4. @symphonyosssymphony.foundation @symphonyosssymphony.foundation Cultural Default closedto default open, community RoE Legal IP, regulatory Technical OSS supply chain, security-conscious workflow ā Open Source Readiness WG ā Open Developer Platform ā Partner with open source community experts The FinServ Open Source Challenge What to Open Source? Why Open Source? Line of Business enablement Challenges Value Decision Makers enablement
- 5. @symphonyosssymphony.foundationsymphony.foundation @symphonyoss Wall Streetis finally ready to collaborate ā¢ Increasing engagement & contributions from top-tier banks ā¢ Desire for flexibility & avoiding vendor lock-in ā¢ Growing coverage in financial press ā¢ Massive interest at Open Source Strategy Forum
- 6. @symphonyosssymphony.foundation OpenFin Symphony integration https://github.com/symphonyoss/symphony-of @symphonyosssymphony.foundation ā¢Success story of the convergence of open source & open APIs ā¢ Generates value for entire ecosystem ā¢ Vendors get new customer on-ramps via interoperability with other platforms ā¢ End users get competition at solution level, avoid vendor lock-in, workflow customization, and ability to focus on core products ā¢ Foundationās purpose is to catalyze high-value collaborations
- 7. @symphonyosssymphony.foundation @symphonyosssymphony.foundation The wholeecosystem benefits from open platforms AN OPEN PLATFORM OPEN SOURCE ā¢ Commoditize to compete ā¢ Community/customer contributions ā¢ Scalable GTM ā¢ Focus on Core Value/IP ā¢ Avoid vendor lock-in ā¢ Lower total cost of ownership ā¢ Workflow self-determination ā¢ Security compliance ā¢ Contribute toward needed features YOUR VALUE PROPOSITION THE VALUE LINETHE VALUE LINE PLATFORM PROVIDER END USER / INTEGRATOR Agile and Iterative Collaborative customer relationship NETWORK DATA APPS COMMUNITY Open Ecosystem
- 8. @symphonyoss symphony.foundation @symphonyoss symphony.foundation Learn more symphony.foundation 1117 So.California Avenue Palo Alto, CA 94304 USA info@symphony.foundation +1 (650) 665-9773
Editor's Notes
- #3Ā I am gabriele Columbro - executive director of the symphony software foundation. While I have spent a life in open source, between community and commercial companies, I donāt come from the financial services industry per se. While you could probably say I come from the Valley, that Italian part of the Valley, I guess :) So when I started as ED of the Symphony Software Foundation less than 2 years ago, I knew a few things about this industry, but had to learn a thing or two about the world of Financial Technology. I knew thereās amazing technology in this ecosystem but I learned thatās still highly siloed. And I learned that post trade workflows can take days if not weeks. I learned about over time consortiums, standard bodies, working groups tried to build co-opetition models - with generally different degrees of success. And finally, Iāve learned that Open APIs were still a quite new thing for the industry, but - and that I already knew - open source was still looked at with diffidence. But, I quickly learned that, between Fintech platforms enabling entirely new channels in the ecosystem and disruptive disintermediation source technologies like blockchain, the industry was in the midst of a revolution, one that is bound to drive entirely new business models. One that requires a deep questioning, from each player in the ecosystem, as to what it means to build and consume financial technology. So, having the luck to seat with some of the largest financial institutions and financial technology vendors, starting a high stake and collaborative in nature use case like the Symphony platform, we realized the massive opportunity to provide an environment where faster innovation could happen by the means of efficient open collaboration between firms on their technology strategies. But one thing I DID know when I joined was that it was not going to be easy. In fact with great opportunities come great challenges, and especially in regulated industries, as we probably all have experienced - there are great challenges in collaborating across the firewall.