Business Agility

"It's hard to make predictions, especially about the future." *

We can't anticipate the future requirements of all our customers. But what we have done is built Caplin Xaqua to be as flexible as possible.

Flexible Trade Models

Caplin Xaqua can support any trade workflow model you choose to describe; it uses an implementation of Abstract Financial Objects called TradePipes to implement a trade workflow at execution time. You describe the trade workflow for each type of trade you want to support in an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) document - this description includes all the possible states of a trade, how the trade transitions from one state to another and error situations. When a trader executes a trade Caplin Xaqua picks up the correct description of that trade process from the workflow library and implements it in real time.

Adding a new type of trade or a new product is as simple as adding a new XML description to the workflow library.

Adding an entirely new asset class is also very straightforward. First you will need to integrate Caplin Xaqua with the appropriate trading, pricing and permissioning systems within the bank using the APIs in Caplin DataSource+. Caplin Xaqua already includes some standard interfaces to trading and pricing systems, and developing new ones is very straightforward using one of the supported interfaces. Then you add XML descriptions for each of the relevant trade workflows.

Front-End Technologies

Caplin Xaqua supports all the currently available front-end technologies: Web, Adobe Flex and Microsoft Silverlight for implementing Rich Internet Applications (RIAs), and Java and .NET which are more commonly used for developing "fat" client applications to run on the user's desktop. These technologies can be utilised on their own or together, so you could for example build an FX trading portal in Microsoft Silverlight and a bond-trading front-end using standard Web technologies and run both simultaneously using the same Caplin Xaqua infrastructure.

Even if you decide on one technology for all your user constituencies, if you change your mind in the future, or want to include a different technology Caplin Xaqua enables you to do so.

Summary

Caplin Xaqua doesn't limit your choice of functionality or of front-end development technology in any way; any single-dealer platform functionality you could include if you build from the ground up can be built with Caplin Xaqua but more quickly and more cost effectively.

 

* Attributed to Robert Storm Petersen