Custom Software Development Company

A Changing Market

By John Younghusband

FX-MM magazine, which covers the latest developments in Capital Markets and finding as well as risk management and technology issues, places a bylined article by John Younghusband of DataArt, where he reflects on how technological developments have changed the face of FX trading.

As with the stock and commodity exchanges, where new technology has increasingly replaced the traditional open outcry market floors, in foreign exchange the old methodology of banks trading desk-to-desk via dedicated private voice circuits is gradually disappearing. Recent growth in program computer trading is the result of technological developments; a combination of greater computing power, lower telephony costs and “fibre to the kerb” provision for faster connectivity.

Significant volumes of FX trading are done entirely electronically. This change in trading methodology started with the launch of screen trading systems by the banks themselves, such as Deutsche Bank’s “Autobahn” and Barclays “BARX” in the late 1990s. This touched off an arms race in the industry which continues unabated with the emergence of a plethora of competing platforms, each boasting new features and technological advancements.

Original article:
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For the Underbanked, Online Banking Comes to Tablets

By Daniel Wolfe

In this exclusive story, American Banker magazine discusses the tablet app landscape in light of DataArt’s recent completion of a mobile banking Kindle Fire app for Plastyc, a prepaid card marketer, with commentary from Alexei Miller, Executive Vice President at DataArt and Patrice Peyret, CEO of Plastyc.

“The Kindle Fire isn't as capable as the iPad and it isn't as connected as a smartphone — but its mix of price and features makes it extremely well suited to serve the underbanked. Tablets like the iPad and the Kindle use variants of the iOS and Android software, which were originally designed for smartphones. These operating systems naturally lend themselves to a mobile experience, but WiFi tablets like the Kindle Fire aren't replacements for phones, Peyret says — they're replacements for desktop and laptop computers, even among the underbanked.

It's easy to create an app for the Kindle Fire once a company already has an app for Android smartphones or tablets, says Alexei Miller, an executive vice president and partner at DataArt Solutions, the New York vendor that built Plastyc's Kindle Fire app.

"Because the Kindle Fire is basically [using] a modified version of the Android [operating system], you wouldn't believe how little of an effort it is to release a Kindle Fire application once you have an Android application," Miller says. "It is remarkably inexpensive and not time-consuming at all." And many programmers are already starting to think of the tablet space as being more than just the iPad ecosystem, Miller says. "They're trying to ride the next wave, which is HTML5," the latest version of the HTML markup language used for creating Web pages. Some companies' iPad apps are just shells for an HTML5 application, which can be used on multiple devices. These companies "develop for an iPad but they do not develop an Apple app," he says.”

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DataArt Joins OpenTravel Alliance

Travel Daily News picked up the announcement of DataArt joining the OpenTravel Alliance.

“DataArt, a customer software development firm announced its membership to the OpenTravel Alliance - the standards body focused on the creation of electronic message structures to facilitate communication between the disparate systems in the global travel industry.
DataArt, along with existing Open Travel Alliance members, will collaborate to develop a flexible specification framework to improve suppliers and distributors’ communication channels, enhance productivity, and drive quality engagements for customers, partners, and industry affiliates. Recent work within travel and hospitality, specifically with client/partners VacationRoost and Digital Visitor has positioned DataArt as an experienced and trusted provider of distribution solutions to the travel industry.”

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Tablets Need The Right UI To Succeed

By Denis Margolin

Denis Margolin, a Vice President of Mobile Solutions at DataArt, contributes a bylined article on intricacies of tablet user interfaces.

“Switching to the touch-enabled user interface (UI), the native user interface (NUI) is a drastically new paradigm. It wouldn’t be unfair to compare this situation to the early 1990s, when the industry switched to graphical UI from alphanumeric terminals… Tablets are still widely perceived as a toy and a fad. They require a totally different approach to UI, and the techniques transferred from the desktop simply don’t work. While these new approaches are still in the early development stages, the public is failing to recognize the potential of this new platform… As a vendor, we try to give usability advice in these contexts, but it’s harder to do compared to developing traditional desktop or Web-based software. There are no conventions or hard patterns to be reused. Therefore, our usability experts have to sit down and work out the UI almost from scratch each time.”

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Software Development Takes to the Cloud

By Dmitry Yakovlev

Dmitry Yakovlev, Senior Vice President at DataArt, continues the conversation about Cloud computing, as he outlines major platforms and concepts, discusses cloud environments and applications, and shares advice for security strategies in the cloud. “There are four major cloud computing platforms available on the market today which should be known and understood in order to select the best option for which to execute secure custom applications within this arena: Amazon EC2, Windows Azure, Google App Engine and Force.com. Each of these platforms is a more or less successful attempt to commercialize internally-crafted virtualization technology… Combined with dramatically reduced up-front investments in hardware required for high-performance systems, cloud technologies create a lot of market opportunities for small companies and ventures.”

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