On the derivatives trading floor at J.P. Morgan in New York, there is a new information system called Kapital. The trading environment supported by this system is a demanding one: the traders who use it are at the cutting edge of creativity in the financial markets. In addition to trading a wide variety of instruments, they are continually inventing new instruments by combining parts in new ways, “bundling,” or fashioning an entirely new set of custom terms and conditions. Conventional applications development approaches do not easily support the degree of systems flexibility required by such an environment.
Kapital employs some of the most sophisticated technology currently fashionable in the world of information systems today: it is based on a distributed client/server architecture, borrows techniques from the world of artificial intelligence, and is one of the purest implementations of the concept of object-oriented software in the business community. Using Kapital, traders can choose the user interface that suits them, from simple business forms to graphical representations. They can perform powerful financial analytics using complex mathematical models. Kapital accommodates real-time data feeds giving current market information and performs sophisticated portfolio analysis against a variety of market assumptions.
However, what really distinguishes Kapital from other information systems is not the technology, but the fact that it does not attempt to fulfill a specified set of user requirements — at... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.
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