As the regular blog readers know, I am not able to update this blog as much as I would like to. But, I just wanted to let everyone (if there is anyone left) what I am up to.
I am now in charge of an effort to develop a new multi-asset trading system for my company. It brings me into some new technologies which I have not been exposed to before, and will reunite me with some old ones that I haven't touched in 20 years (Linux).
A nice thing about my company is that I can be fairly agile in my role. One day I am managing ten people and developing pricing tools for the Equity Derivatives desk, and the next day, I am flying off across the Atlantic to interview vendors and pouring over SOWs. One thing that I am always happy about is that I will always be coding to some extent.
Sorry that I can't say more.
-marc
©2010 Marc Adler - All Rights Reserved. All opinions here are personal, and have no relation to my employer.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Friday, August 13, 2010
Is Oracle a Threat to Java
Oracle sues Google over the use of Java.
I really don't follow what is happening in the Java community. But, any IT woker on Wall Street knows that there are an awful lot of trading systems whose server-side processing is written in Java. Many of those system rely on open-source efforts that may eventually come under fire by Oracle.
Will this also affect alternate Java VM implementations that are used in trading systems?
©2010 Marc Adler - All Rights Reserved. All opinions here are personal, and have no relation to my employer.
I really don't follow what is happening in the Java community. But, any IT woker on Wall Street knows that there are an awful lot of trading systems whose server-side processing is written in Java. Many of those system rely on open-source efforts that may eventually come under fire by Oracle.
Will this also affect alternate Java VM implementations that are used in trading systems?
©2010 Marc Adler - All Rights Reserved. All opinions here are personal, and have no relation to my employer.
Sunday, August 08, 2010
C++ programmers consider themselves superior to C# counterpar... on Twitpic
C++ programmers consider themselves superior to C# counterpar... on Twitpic
©2010 Marc Adler - All Rights Reserved. All opinions here are personal, and have no relation to my employer.
©2010 Marc Adler - All Rights Reserved. All opinions here are personal, and have no relation to my employer.
Microsoft Drops Quadrant
http://www.infoq.com/news/2010/08/quadrant-drops
I have been considering asking my team to start exploring Oslo and M in order to create a DSL for automated testing of all of our systems, including the entire workflow for our Equity Derivatives traders. But, Microsoft's (non) strategy around Oslo, M, and Quadrant has me looking elsewhere .... back to the old standbys of Yacc/Lex or Antlr.
I have been out of the CEP business for the past year, but other than Matt Davey of 7-Squared using SI for a demo, has anybody else been exploring or using StreamInsight in Capital Markets?
©2010 Marc Adler - All Rights Reserved. All opinions here are personal, and have no relation to my employer.
I have been considering asking my team to start exploring Oslo and M in order to create a DSL for automated testing of all of our systems, including the entire workflow for our Equity Derivatives traders. But, Microsoft's (non) strategy around Oslo, M, and Quadrant has me looking elsewhere .... back to the old standbys of Yacc/Lex or Antlr.
I have been out of the CEP business for the past year, but other than Matt Davey of 7-Squared using SI for a demo, has anybody else been exploring or using StreamInsight in Capital Markets?
©2010 Marc Adler - All Rights Reserved. All opinions here are personal, and have no relation to my employer.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Kolibrifx Blog
http://kolibrifx.com/
©2010 Marc Adler - All Rights Reserved. All opinions here are personal, and have no relation to my employer.
©2010 Marc Adler - All Rights Reserved. All opinions here are personal, and have no relation to my employer.
A New Blog to Read
http://quantivity.wordpress.com/
©2010 Marc Adler - All Rights Reserved. All opinions here are personal, and have no relation to my employer.
©2010 Marc Adler - All Rights Reserved. All opinions here are personal, and have no relation to my employer.
Sunday, May 02, 2010
More on Consolidation in the CEP Industry (re: Opher)
Opher Etzion mentioned my latest blog posting and my "return to blogland". I am happy that, after all of these months, some people are still reading this blog. It's difficult for me to watch all of the blogging from the sidelines, but as many of the readers here know, when I started my new job, I gave my word that I would reduce my blogging my 99%. And, since my daughter starts McGill University in the fall, I would like to be able to pay for her college education, even though McGill is half the cost of Carnegie Mellon (her other top choice).
But, back to Opher's posting. Yes, there is a certain amount of stability when a large company purchases a small software manufacturer. For example, all of my concerns about the financial stability of a company like Coral8 would be assuaged by their takeover by Sybase. I do not know how much longer Coral8 and Aleri could have lasted given their revenue at the time of their purchase.
But, I used to like the fact that, if you needed questions answered about the internal architecture of the product or about the roadmap, you could usually get directly in touch with the CEO or CTO, and they would give you immediate answers, most often on a weekend. You would never get that same level of support from a Sybase, an IBM, or an Oracle.
With a smaller company, you had more control over negotiating licensing costs and maintenance fees. They were anxious for your business. The cost of Coral8 for a single core was $15K, and you could get a license for an 8 core machine for $120K (or, if you negotiated really hard, for $100K). I wonder what the current price for Coral8 under Sybase is now. I wonder if you could even purchase the legacy Coral8 product anymore, or whether it is wrapped up inside of Sybase RAP.
When I asked Coral8 or Aleri to come to a meeting at Citigroup, and to only show up with two people, they would agree and comply. When I asked IBM to come with 2 people when they demoed their CEP product to me, they showed up with about 10 people, most of whom just sat their with their hands folded or took notes on everything I said. After they did this, I refused to take any more meetings with the IBM team on their CEP product, even though I had a few good email exchanges with some of their more technical people. Such is the arrogance and disregard for the (potential) custom that I have often found with a very large company.
Many times, when a small and innovative company gets bought by a mega company, you lose the two most important things that the small company has to offer .... the people and the innovate-or-die attitude. You most certainly lose the small-town, personal touch that the company gives you. On that note, a fond goodbye to the guy with the most infectious laugh in the industry, Jon Reicke, who is now making people laugh at Google in New York.
I certainly hope that Panopticon, one of the last of the good guys, does not get swallowed up by Sybase, but I am not hopeful. But in the rush for consolidation, this would not surprise me at all.
©2010 Marc Adler - All Rights Reserved. All opinions here are personal, and have no relation to my employer.
But, back to Opher's posting. Yes, there is a certain amount of stability when a large company purchases a small software manufacturer. For example, all of my concerns about the financial stability of a company like Coral8 would be assuaged by their takeover by Sybase. I do not know how much longer Coral8 and Aleri could have lasted given their revenue at the time of their purchase.
But, I used to like the fact that, if you needed questions answered about the internal architecture of the product or about the roadmap, you could usually get directly in touch with the CEO or CTO, and they would give you immediate answers, most often on a weekend. You would never get that same level of support from a Sybase, an IBM, or an Oracle.
With a smaller company, you had more control over negotiating licensing costs and maintenance fees. They were anxious for your business. The cost of Coral8 for a single core was $15K, and you could get a license for an 8 core machine for $120K (or, if you negotiated really hard, for $100K). I wonder what the current price for Coral8 under Sybase is now. I wonder if you could even purchase the legacy Coral8 product anymore, or whether it is wrapped up inside of Sybase RAP.
When I asked Coral8 or Aleri to come to a meeting at Citigroup, and to only show up with two people, they would agree and comply. When I asked IBM to come with 2 people when they demoed their CEP product to me, they showed up with about 10 people, most of whom just sat their with their hands folded or took notes on everything I said. After they did this, I refused to take any more meetings with the IBM team on their CEP product, even though I had a few good email exchanges with some of their more technical people. Such is the arrogance and disregard for the (potential) custom that I have often found with a very large company.
Many times, when a small and innovative company gets bought by a mega company, you lose the two most important things that the small company has to offer .... the people and the innovate-or-die attitude. You most certainly lose the small-town, personal touch that the company gives you. On that note, a fond goodbye to the guy with the most infectious laugh in the industry, Jon Reicke, who is now making people laugh at Google in New York.
I certainly hope that Panopticon, one of the last of the good guys, does not get swallowed up by Sybase, but I am not hopeful. But in the rush for consolidation, this would not surprise me at all.
©2010 Marc Adler - All Rights Reserved. All opinions here are personal, and have no relation to my employer.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
$6M not enough for StreamBase
Interesting post from Marco here.
Sad to say, but Streambase is one of the last of the pure-play CEP vendors. What an incredible change that the CEP industry has seen in the past two years. I know of a well-known major company who needs to make a big decision about CEP in the next few months, and the playing field has been narrowed down to such as extent that I would have a difficult time choosing a technology partner if I was them.
Does anyone know if Esper is still around? Sad to see that Alex V is moving on from his relationship with Esper.
©2010 Marc Adler - All Rights Reserved. All opinions here are personal, and have no relation to my employer.
Sad to say, but Streambase is one of the last of the pure-play CEP vendors. What an incredible change that the CEP industry has seen in the past two years. I know of a well-known major company who needs to make a big decision about CEP in the next few months, and the playing field has been narrowed down to such as extent that I would have a difficult time choosing a technology partner if I was them.
Does anyone know if Esper is still around? Sad to see that Alex V is moving on from his relationship with Esper.
©2010 Marc Adler - All Rights Reserved. All opinions here are personal, and have no relation to my employer.
Saturday, March 06, 2010
A Few Notes on What I Am Up To
I don't blog very much anymore. When I joined my new company, I agreed to cut down on the blogging, and I have been so incredibly busy that I would not have been able to blog even if given free rein.
I run the desktop applications group at my new company. This means that I gather requirements from the various trading desks and built .NET-based apps for them. I run a team of 6 people now, and we are slated to grow to about 20 by the end of the year. So, if you are a great .NET developer with multi-threading experience, give me a shout. We have a mixture of WinForms and WPF apps, although this is moving rapidly to 100% WPF.
Our offices are in midtown Manhattan (you may need to travel to Chicago once or twice a year), we serve free lunch and breakfast, and we have free memberships to various health clubs. Plus all of the other standard perks. Send an email to me at magmasystems at gmail dot com.
We also have a lot of openings for great C++/Linux people who have heavy financial industry experience with real-time systems. (Sorry to all of the Java devs ... we don't use Java at all.)
We had some great wins this week. We were able to turn a buy-side hedge fund into a sell-side firm, and our Equity Derivatives desk is in business with customers, about a month before our original target date. My group is now implementing systems for some of the other trading desks. It is incredible to be able to be there at the genesis of a new Investment Bank, something that we hope will eventually compete with the likes of Goldman and Barcap.
The other part of my job is Architecture, and now that the desktop team has some momentum, I hope to be branching out and exploring various tools that will make our traders more productive. Basically, trying to do some of the same stuff that I was doing at Citi eons ago.
©2010 Marc Adler - All Rights Reserved.
All opinions here are personal, and have no relation to my employer.
I run the desktop applications group at my new company. This means that I gather requirements from the various trading desks and built .NET-based apps for them. I run a team of 6 people now, and we are slated to grow to about 20 by the end of the year. So, if you are a great .NET developer with multi-threading experience, give me a shout. We have a mixture of WinForms and WPF apps, although this is moving rapidly to 100% WPF.
Our offices are in midtown Manhattan (you may need to travel to Chicago once or twice a year), we serve free lunch and breakfast, and we have free memberships to various health clubs. Plus all of the other standard perks. Send an email to me at magmasystems at gmail dot com.
We also have a lot of openings for great C++/Linux people who have heavy financial industry experience with real-time systems. (Sorry to all of the Java devs ... we don't use Java at all.)
We had some great wins this week. We were able to turn a buy-side hedge fund into a sell-side firm, and our Equity Derivatives desk is in business with customers, about a month before our original target date. My group is now implementing systems for some of the other trading desks. It is incredible to be able to be there at the genesis of a new Investment Bank, something that we hope will eventually compete with the likes of Goldman and Barcap.
The other part of my job is Architecture, and now that the desktop team has some momentum, I hope to be branching out and exploring various tools that will make our traders more productive. Basically, trying to do some of the same stuff that I was doing at Citi eons ago.
©2010 Marc Adler - All Rights Reserved.
All opinions here are personal, and have no relation to my employer.
Thursday, February 04, 2010
The Sybase / Aleri Announcement is out
The announcement came out this morning. A very short press release.
Don DeLoach (who was not mentioned in the press release) is leaving the company. As are others.
My main question is where this will leave the legacy Aleri product. As we all know, Sybase RAP uses a copy of Coral8. And where does this leave the new "Ohio" product, which was the magical combination of Aleri and Coral8.
I have a lot more to say about this over the next few days.
©2010 Marc Adler - All Rights Reserved.
All opinions here are personal, and have no relation to my employer.
Don DeLoach (who was not mentioned in the press release) is leaving the company. As are others.
My main question is where this will leave the legacy Aleri product. As we all know, Sybase RAP uses a copy of Coral8. And where does this leave the new "Ohio" product, which was the magical combination of Aleri and Coral8.
I have a lot more to say about this over the next few days.
©2010 Marc Adler - All Rights Reserved.
All opinions here are personal, and have no relation to my employer.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Sybase/Aleri
I am writing this a few days before the Sybase announcement that they purchased Aleri. I am absolutely stunned at the collective yawn that this news has produced. Nothing from Wall Street & Technology magazine. Nothing on the Streambase blog. Nothing from Tim Bass.
I guess that the mere mention of CEP does not get anyone's pulse moving anymore.
©2009 Marc Adler - All Rights Reserved.
All opinions here are personal, and have no relation to my employer.
I guess that the mere mention of CEP does not get anyone's pulse moving anymore.
©2009 Marc Adler - All Rights Reserved.
All opinions here are personal, and have no relation to my employer.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Did Sybase Buy Aleri???
Rumor today of this deal transpiring.
In fact, I have heard that the announcement will come on Monday.
©2010 Marc Adler - All Rights Reserved.
All opinions here are personal, and have no relation to my employer.
In fact, I have heard that the announcement will come on Monday.
©2010 Marc Adler - All Rights Reserved.
All opinions here are personal, and have no relation to my employer.
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