OStatic

Marketcetera announced this week that it has secured $4 million in Series A funding to develop a software stack designed to automate financial trading. While Marketcetera might be one of the first open source companies to "aim for the specialized world of Wall Street trading," it's not likely to be the last. Between the continuous flow of venture capital funding toward open source projects and Wall Street's apparent readiness to embrace the open source philosophy, Marketcetera's new cash infusion looks to be just the tip of the iceberg.

For years, big-name Wall Street firms have taken notice of what large-scale deployments of Linux applications can do for a company's bottom line. Merrill Lynch deployed Red Hat company-wide some six years ago and Credit Suisse First Boston attributes its long-time use of Linux solutions as being responsible for a twenty-fold increase in trading volume.

Comments made during panel discussions and presentations at the recent Linux/Open Source on Wall Street conference indicate that many more financial firms intend to follow suit. Citigroup says it plans to add Linux applications to its infrastructure, and the CME Group detailed for the audience its recent full-scale migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

However, as Marketcetera's announcement shows, open source solutions on Wall Street aren't limited to just server deployments. Cnet's Matt Asay posits that many in the financial industry "increasingly view open source as the foundation of choice for their innovation" and that's leading to an uptick in companies like Marketcetera who are willing to enter the market with open source products and solutions aimed squarely at Wall Street.

Naysayers have often advised against the enterprise adoption of open source software, citing data security as a primary reason. As more financial instituations exhibit confidence in open source, however, it can only serve to strengthen inroads that open source solutions are making in every corner of the business world.

What is your confidence level in companies that use open source tools and software behind their financial transaction capabilities?

• wall street
• finance
• banking
• trading