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.

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.

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.

Kolibrifx Blog

http://kolibrifx.com/


©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.

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.

$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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A First Experiment with the RX Framework

A first experiment with the RX framework. This generates 5 stock prices for 4 different stocks.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
 
namespace RXStockGenerator
{
    class TestRX
    {
        public TestRX()
        {
            using (new StockPriceGenerator().Subscribe(q => Console.WriteLine("Quote: " + q)))
            {
                Console.WriteLine("Press any key to unsubscribe");
                Console.ReadKey();
            }
        }
    }
 
    class StockPriceGenerator : IObservable<StockQuote>
    {
        private readonly Random m_random;
 
        public StockPriceGenerator()
        {
            this.m_random = new Random();
        }
 
        public IDisposable Subscribe(IObserver<StockQuote> observer)
        {
            List<IObservable<StockQuote>> generators = new List<IObservable<StockQuote>>
            {
                this.Generate("AAPL", 200.00, 100),
                this.Generate("IBM", 120.00, 150),
                this.Generate("MSFT", 30.00, 125),
                this.Generate("GE", 15.00, 175),
            };
 
            return generators.Merge().Subscribe(observer);
        }
 
        public IObservable<StockQuote> Generate(string symbol, double startPrice, int delay)
        {
            return Observable.Generate(
                0,
                i => i < 5,
                _ => new StockQuote(symbol, startPrice + this.m_random.NextDouble()),
                _ => TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(delay),
                i => i + 1);
        }
    }
 
    class StockQuote
    {
        public string Symbol { get; set; }
        public double Price { get; set; }
 
        public StockQuote(string symbol, double price)
        {
            this.Symbol = symbol;
            this.Price = price;
        }
 
        public override string ToString()
        {
            return string.Format("{0}/{1:##.#0}", this.Symbol, this.Price);
        }
    }
}

LinkedIn Groups Created By Headhunters

I have noticed that Headhunters who operate in a particular space in Capital Markets or have a job opening in a certain area will create LinkedIn groups for the sole purpose of identifying candidates. I never join groups that have been created by a headhunter unless they are personally recommended to me.

For me, LinkedIn is becoming a bit like the Wild West, and its usefulness will be diluted by recruiters who misuse the service.

Thoughts?


©2009 Marc Adler - All Rights Reserved.
All opinions here are personal, and have no relation to my employer.

Anything Happening in the World of CEP?

Since starting my new job, I have not heard very much about the world of Complex Event Processing. Has the buzz disappeared?


©2009 Marc Adler - All Rights Reserved.
All opinions here are personal, and have no relation to my employer.

New York Word - Advertisement

I was speaking to a very old friend and colleague from 1984, when I worked at Computer Associates. His start-up company, Scientia, was bought out by Sorcim, the makers of SuperCalc. In turn, Sorcim was gobbled up by CA.

Out of curiosity, I Googled "Scientia", and I found out that Google has archived past issues of InfoWorld magazine.

I came across this little ditty .....




©2009 Marc Adler - All Rights Reserved.
All opinions here are personal, and have no relation to my employer.

Some Reading and Thoughts

Smart Guys on Wall Street from the New York Times

Rico Mariani looks back on his personal history of Visual Studio while working at Microsoft.

Matt Davey is having some fun with StreamInsight (aka Orinoco). When I was at the Microsoft Design Review last January, I was jumping up and down about some of the interesting design decisions that the Orinoco team make concerning their adapter model. Hopefully, with more people chiming in, the StreamInsight guys will refactor their model while they are in CTP mode. Or, at least, before I have to start using it again.

Meanwhile, I am down to less than 2 weeks left before my Gardening Leave is over. It's great to get a paycheck while I am sitting at home, but I REALLY need to get back to work. I have been occupied with my other blog that is devoted to Magma, the French band that I have been addicted to for the past 35 years. If any of you Capital Markets guys are fans of progressive music, I would love to hear about it.

Rodrick Brown just left the Munis Tech area of my former firm and has struck out on his own with his own shop, Orvid Technologies.


©2009 Marc Adler - All Rights Reserved.
All opinions here are personal, and have no relation to my employer.

Take a look at this Tibco/C# Consultant Solicitation

This evening, I received the following message from a recruiter who must have me in his database:

Hi Marc,

C# Tibco contract, 40-60/hr, 12 months in NYC. Would you be interested in this?

Thanks and have a nice evening,

Mr. XXX YYYY
Managing Partner
(Contracting Company)



Even though I am not in the market, I paused to consider this solicitation, and I found this rate to be somewhat insulting and way below what the market would bear. As a hiring manager, I would be highly suspicious of any Tibco consultant who would be getting this rate.

One nice thing that my former employer did was to make sure that the rate that an approved vendor (ie: body shop) pays to a consultant is no less that a certain percentage of the billing rate. For example, if a body shop was billing me $1000 a day for a consultant on a 1099, then we insured that the consultant would get no less than 85% of that billing rate (usually higher).

This would be more than enough profit for the vendor, and we would know that our consultant was not getting taken to the cleaners. A happy consultant is a productive consultant.

By the way, I would consider $100 an hour to be a fair rate for a really good Tibco/C# consultant. Why the low rate for the job that this recruiter is offering? It's not the days of 2002-2004, where great developers were getting $35/hr. The consulting market is very strong right now, and the big companies (ie: the users of things like Tibco) are holding their consulting rates steady.


Update - The recruiter contacted me and mentioned that this position was for a JUNIOR Tibco/C# consultant, hence the lower rate. I feel that Tibco is tricky enough (especially for lower latency apps) where I would only be comfortable with a senior-level Tibco consultant. However, as always, this is my opinion. Your mileage may vary.


©2009 Marc Adler - All Rights Reserved.
All opinions here are personal, and have no relation to my employer.

Review of the Rock In Opposition Music Festival

For those wondering what I am doing on my gardening leave, I am putting some effort into my other blog. Just returned from 5 days in Europe. Now I have to concentrate on reworking the lighting in my house.

Thanks to all of the people who have written to me since I announced my resignation.

Over the next few days, I actually might write a little blog post here on some of the lessons that were learned in running the Complex Event Processing group at Citi. I have some pretty strong opinions about the state of commercial CEP technology, but would you expect anything else????

Meanwhile, I am so stoked to be joining my new company. I kept myself busy for a little while with the constant twiddling and refactoring of my Facebook Notifier. My son tells me that I can make a fortune by selling it, as it seems to be something that is badly needed by PC users. But, with my new job, I will not have any time to enhance it and support it. I ran a software company for 10 years, and I don't know if I will ever be releasing another piece of commercial software again. Just too much hassle right now.


©2009 Marc Adler - All Rights Reserved.
All opinions here are personal, and have no relation to my employer.

Facebook Notifier

OK, I've become hopelessly addicted to Facebook ... I admit it.

Last night, with the rain pouring outside and the US Open tennis matches postponed, I decided to write something that I've wanted for a long time. An application that sits in the Windows System Tray and notifies me when I get a new Facebook notification. By "notification", I am referring to the red balloon with the number '4':

By having this, I don't have to constantly surf over to the Facebook homepage in order to check my activity.

Luckily, there is a .NET Toolkit for Facebook here. Using this toolkit, it only took me about two hours from start to finish to complete my notifier. I spent another hour cleaning up the code and parameterizing some of the hard-coded things like my user ID, my application's secret codes, and the stuff around the playing of the notification sound.

I found that I had to resort to FQL (which is the SQL-like query facility that Facebook provides) to properly retrieve the state of my Facebook notifications. The function that the Facebook Toolkit gave me always told me that I had no notifications.

I also added the ability to pump in my own notifications for testing purposes.

This application is just for me, and I do not think that I will be releasing it. If I really wanted to do something serious, I would create a general-purpose notifier toolkit that is able to work over Facebook, GMail, Yahoo Mail, etc. Each of these services would have its own "input adapter" as part of the notification framework. And, I would probably integrate this with some sort of CEP engine so that alerts could be sent to a Facebook account.

Maybe one day in the future .....



©2009 Marc Adler - All Rights Reserved.
All opinions here are personal, and have no relation to my employer.

Update on the Job Market

(As I was in the middle of answering a question from someone during my hand-off, my Blackberry reset itself. When it came back on, I found my account terminated from the Citigroup Blackberry server. Oh well ... let them figure out the answers for themselves!)

Some people have asked me what I think of the job market right now in Capital Markets IT.

From my vantage point, the job market for good IT people is exploding right now. There are a few reasons for this:

1) Traders who were displaced from companies like Lehman, Bear, and Merrill are finding themselves in demand, and they are starting to land at various Investment Banks and Hedge Funds. As these people get settled in their new positions, they are asking for systems that are similar to what they had before and what they used to generate profits.

2) Good IT people are leaving the existing companies in droves and going to the non-TARP (ie: non-US) banks. For example, the entire CEP team from Merrill left to go to Deutsche Bank. In particular, Deutsche has been hiring like mad. Hedge Funds who had a bad year last year have recovered, and along with that recovery, they are starting to fill some of the positions that they had eliminated.

3) Upper-level IT management are changing firms, and bringing along their best people with them. This leaves a void at their old firms.

4) More demand for risk management, WPF-based GUIs, equity derivatives.

What is also interesting is that companies are starting to pay up. Even the companies who have been known as notoriously low payers realize that they need to compete, and they are paying above-market rates for new talent, much to the chagrin of the legacy people at the firms.

Is the market completely back to normal? I don't think so. But if you are a really good IT person with some Capital Markets experience, you should have problem landing a position right now.


©2009 Marc Adler - All Rights Reserved.
All opinions here are personal, and have no relation to my employer.