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Open Source Banking
Cynical Yorkshireman writes "I sold my soul to investment banking a long time ago ... It's nice to know that some of the Wall Street money machines are actually quite forward thinking about IT! Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein will announce today that (with Collab.net's help) that they are open-sourcing their internal systems integration toolkit.
The official launch is today. Until recently I actually worked at DrKW, and have used this stuff a heck of a lot over the years. Basically, this is a toolkit that allows disparate systems to be connected (Sybase->RV->JMS->IIOP->ETX->MQ->UDB is a snap) in a very, very easy way. Without doubt one of the best pieces of software I have ever seen, and far and away the most useful!
Go get it (when the site opens), and never worry about system interfacing again ..." There's also a Reuters story with more information. Note that openadaptor.org is still password-protected as I write this.
To clarify what the openadaptor software is and is not: As the original poster noted, the openadaptor software provides easy ways to set up connections between different types of applications; it is basically an integration toolkit. However the openadaptor software is not in and of itself a banking application. Thus, for example, openadaptor was used to help implement a global equities derivative trading system at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, but the openadaptor code itself does not perform the financial calculations involved in derivatives trading.
I should also note that the potential usefulness of openadaptor extends well beyond banking and financial services; any company with large complex IT systems might be interested in it, especially companies that have to integrate systems across divisional or corporate boundaries, for example as a result of a merger or acquisition. (This includes Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein itself -- it was known as Dresdner Kleinwort Benson until it recently merged with Wasserstein Perella.)