Earlier this week, I participated in a webinar with FierceFinance on Big Data and next-era business intelligence. In preparation for the event, I took a look at the nature of banking and Big Data which blends the virtual world with the real world. I was struck by just how much opportunity there is for retail banks to use big data... Continue reading

Last fall we collaborated with the Economist Intelligence Unit to look at how companies around the world are responding to the rapidly increasing pace of change in business. While I touched on some of the early quantitative results in a post for The Business Insider in September, the Economist researchers recently released some compelling qualitative data that shines a light... Continue reading

With the New Year just around the corner, many are busy thinking up unattainable diet and fitness resolutions, but we here at Progress have instead spent our time collaborating on more realistic forecasts for the coming year. The team here at Progress put our heads together to produce our top predictions on how the role of IT within the business... Continue reading

Today, Progress announced the acquisition of Corticon, an industry leader in the Business Rules Management System (BRMS) market. I’m incredibly excited about this acquisition. I want to take a moment to talk about why we made the decision to acquire Corticon and why I’m so thrilled. As you know, Progress is the “responsive business specialist”. A responsive business is one... Continue reading

Recently, I took part in a live Twitter Q&A with our official Twitter feed, @ProgressSW. For those who missed our online chat, we transcribed the Q&A so you can read what I tweeted about optimization, agility, and industry trends. Follow me on Twitter Follow Progress Sofware on Twitter Optimizing your organization PRGS: What are the simplest and best practices we... Continue reading

The following is a guest blog by Chris Webber, Senior Editor of the Economist Intelligence Unit. He conducted a research study on the role of technology in making business decisions and presented his findings during a session at Progress Revolution Boston 2011. By: Chris Webber, Senior Editor of the Economist Intelligence Unit History shows that organisations struggle to cope with... Continue reading

It is no secret that the telecommunications industry has been exploring various ways to tackle issues such as declining ARPU (average revenue per user) and increasing customer churn over the last five years. The keys to proactively addressing these issues are agility and responsiveness. For example, responsiveness around customer service – to make customers feel they have a personalized valuable... Continue reading

A pattern is emerging within new financial services regulations where regulators and financial services firms deploy monitoring technology to "red flag" potential issues such as risk, position limits, errors and manipulation. The "red flags" raised would then alert the relevant personnel or authorities. In the case of the Volcker Rule, prohibiting banks from proprietary trading and investing in or sponsoring... Continue reading

You may be asking yourself what these three names have in common and we found out at the Progress Software Summit on responsive process management in New York City yesterday. Following Larry Kudlow’s speech the audience heard from Progress Software CEO, Rick Reidy, yours truly, and Forrester analyst John R. Rymer. What we heard from Rymer repeatedly was that business... Continue reading

Our Progress Software Summit kicked off this week at the Hudson Hotel in New York City with a keynote address from CNBC’s Larry Kudlow, “From Washington to Wall Street.” Kudlow dove right into the dominant headline-grabber of the day – the mid-term elections. Larry used the elections as a springboard to touch upon his thoughts on economic policy, politics and... Continue reading

I have been seeing an increasing amount on interest in the marriage between Business Transaction Management (BTM) and Complex Event Processing (CEP). On July 29th Dr Dobbs Journal published an article called Complex Event Processing: IT Liberator or Over-Engineering Hell? This article was about the synergy of BTM and CEP (although I felt it was rather biased towards one company).... Continue reading

I just posted a blog entry on how changes in capital markets regulations may lead to out of work traders joining hedge funds. It may be a culture shock without the big bank budgets - but advanced trading technology is not out of reach. See the full article here: "Evacuate the Dancefloor". Continue reading

I just published a blog posting on how Brazil has seen booming growth in algorithmic trading over the last couple of year - with Progress Software right at the heart of it: See the full link here Continue reading

I just posted a blog on the potential of algorithmic trading terrorism -- can a "denial of service" style attack cripple world markets? See the full posting here: Blog Post: Algorithmic Terrorism > Continue reading

Today Nasdaq group purchased Smarts - a provider of market surveillance. This is an interesting development . Read the full post on our Apama blog : Smart- But is it Smart Enough > Continue reading

Fat fingers (or weight-challenged digits - for the more politically correct :-) ) are trading errors that can have catastrophic consequences. And they've been happening a lot recently!! Read my full blog post here. Continue reading

It was an honor to sit on the CFTC Technology Advisory Committee (TAC) last week. The CFTC is the US regulator for derivatives trading – which is a big area. The topic of the first meeting of the TAC was to understand Algorithmic and High Frequency Trading – and its impact on the market. The CFTC is sensibly trying to... Continue reading

Yesterday the CFTC, the regulator in charge of Futures and Options markets, announced a new Technology Advisory Committee (TAC), chaired by the very capable Commissioner Scott O’Malia. Read the complete article. I am absolutely delighted to be included in the group of experts that the CFTC has called together to form the TAC. I am joined by an extraordinary group... Continue reading

The news that Steven Perkins, (former) oil futures broker in the London office of PVM Oil Futures, has been fined 72,000 pounds ($108,400) by the FSA and banned from working in the industry is no surprise, see article here. It could have been worse given that the broker, after a few days of heavy drinking, took on a 7.0 million... Continue reading

By now you’ve probably seen that a deal was reached this morning by the House and Senate on regulation. Some would say it waters down provisions from the tougher Senate bill, limiting rather than prohibiting banks to trade derivatives and invest in hedge funds. This articles describes it as banks “dodging a bullet” http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-25/banks-dodged-a-bullet-as-u-s-congress-dilutes-trading-rules.html We applaud the superhuman efforts put... Continue reading

Jerome Kerviel, the trader who allegedly lost Societe Generale nearly 5.0 million euros, went on trial in Paris on Tuesday, June 8th. The bank alleges that Kerviel took "massive fraudulent directional positions" in 2007 and 2008, which were far beyond his trading limits. It is interesting to note that Kerviel was not only experienced on the trading floor, but he... Continue reading

Washington, D.C., May 26, 2010 — The Securities and Exchange Commission today proposed a new rule that would require the self-regulatory organizations (SROs) to establish a consolidated audit trail system that would enable regulators to track information related to trading orders received and executed across the securities markets. http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2010/2010-86.htm I support the SEC's intention to improve real-time market surveillance and... Continue reading

I was very interested in Tim Bass' response to my posting Regulation: Don’t Throw the Baby Out With the Bathwater. You can read Tim's post here but in summary he feels that "the US economy (read individual investors) would be much better off if financial services firms (or anyone) were not permitted to use computers next to stock exchanges to... Continue reading