Financial Market Data Web Services – Xignite Blog

It takes 5 minutes to beat cream into butter, write half of your name in Elvish, or create a homemade tattoo gun.  Or if you want to get really wild, you could spend your next 5 minutes creating a Windows application to get real-time precious metal quotes.  If that’s a little too wild for you, you could also live vicariously through us by watching a video of us doing it.  But if you’re ready to throw caution to the wind and give it a try for yourself, here’s how:
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In the next 5 minutes, you could get $5 worth of plumbing services, $30 worth of legal advice or $17 worth of psychotherapy. Or, you could just spend your next five minutes building a real-time stock quote widget. Don’t think it can be done in 5 minutes? Check out a video showing us doing it in less time.

Here’s how you can do the same thing using PHP and Eclipse, although the same basic process can be used for any language and any IDE:
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Now that the cat’s finally out of the bag on BGCantor’s new on-demand web services, I can finally take the readers of the Xignite blog back stage for a “behind the scenes” look at the making of the biggest initiative in the on-demand financial web services world since the start of Xignite.

BGCantor On-Demand offers fixed income and derivatives data via on-demand web services using Xignite’s core platform.

What happened behind the scenes?  How did this new on-demand business get launched?  And what did it take to launch it?  Well, first and foremost, it took a great team at BGCantor Market Data.  The BGCantor team was absolutely delightful to work with.  Everyone was highly knowledgeable, very responsive, dedicated to accomplishing the mission and very excited about the whole project.  We couldn’t have asked for a better group to work with.

Together, the BGCantor/Xignite team started by designing web services to be truly application-ready, combining Xignite’s web service experience with BGCantor’s in-depth market data knowledge.  Then we coded the web services on top of the XigniteOnDemand market data distribution platform for rapid development on a robust, high-performance, highly scalable architecture.  At the same time, we also built the BGCantor On-Demand website and tightly integrated it with the web services themselves.  To help manage the new on-demand business, we also deployed an administrative portal for on-going management of customer accounts.  At the same time, on the sales and marketing front, we worked together to find just the right usage-based pricing model to drive strong revenue growth for BGCantor while also delivering exceptional value for BGCantor’s customers.  Then we collaborated on developing marketing collateral and sales tools.

As for showing you blooper videos of our behind-the-scenes footage, I’m afraid I couldn’t quite convince Legal to sign off on that. Sorry. Maybe next time.

I was reminded when we launched XigniteGlobalRealTime this week of how small the world has become. There was a time when traveling from Europe to my house in California would have taken months by sea, then months by covered wagon. Now I can make the trip in a single non-stop 21-hour flight. Granted, I have to brave the kid kicking the back of my seat, screaming babies, the guy with N1H1 to my right, and the guy to my left who spends all 21 hours trying to sell me life insurance while telling me his life story. But at least I don’t have to worry about scurvy… just airline food.

The world of market data has also gotten much smaller. Not too long ago, getting intraday stock quotes from Europe’s biggest exchanges was simply out of reach for any U.S. company that didn’t have a six-figure technology budget. Now even small startup companies on a shoestring budget can get real-time Level 1 stock quotes from even the smallest European exchanges, not to mention countless other exchanges around the world. What’s next? Frequent data miles for global market data usage? (Hmmm… Not a bad idea.)

Like the red-headed stepchild of reference data, corporate actions have been easy to neglect for many years, given the time, expense and difficulty of automation.  That is, until the financial crisis combined with globalization to turn corporate actions into a high-priority risk factor.  Like a red-headed stepchild turned Class A felon, corporate actions now threaten portfolios with greater risk than ever.

Before the crisis, globalization had already brought corporate actions to the breaking point.  Portfolios filled with a wide array of securities from companies around the globe naturally required a way to handle corporate actions from a wider array of companies adhering to a wider array of standards and regulations.  Let’s face it.  It’s not easy to build automated systems to handle an increasingly diverse set of data delivered through an ever more diverse set of technology standards.  So, it was easy for corporate action automation projects to fall off the bottom of the priority list.

But now, with the global financial crisis in full swing, the good old days of being able to neglect corporate actions appear to be over.  As companies seek to respond to the crisis, they’re issuing a flood of new corporate actions to reorganize, inject new capital, retain cash and accomplish a host of other creative financial solutions.  For investors and asset managers, it’s as if the red-headed stepchild is on a rampage, knocking over IT’s system building blocks, breaking analysts’ economic models for valuing securities, and generally making asset managers lose their hair.

I wish I could claim it was prophetic that we timed the release of XigniteCorporateActions to coincide with the up-surge in demand we’re seeing for automating corporate actions, but it was really more a matter of luck than foresight.  Still, it’s hard to imagine a time when on-demand financial web services for corporate actions data was needed more than right now.

So, if your red-headed stepchild has been begging to go to juvie in recent months, here’s a little tough-love parenting tip:  Don’t waste the next nine months trying to build your own data management prison to contain your corporate actions problems.  Just dial the Xignite emergency number and ask for an on-demand web service that can lock up your corporate actions problems in a matter of weeks instead of months.

If there’s a silver lining to the global financial crisis, it’s the renewed appreciation for business basics. In this period of uncertainty, company fundamentals and long-term prudence have taken center stage in place of wild-eyed speculation and short-term gains.  One anecdotal example of this trend is the steady increase in demand for XigniteFundamentals, now our seventh most popular web service, providing U.S. company fundamentals and financial data.

In fact, a new appreciation for fundamentals could very well be the solution to the current crisis. Many large, successful companies originally started during tough economic times. Just a few examples include Google, Microsoft, FedEx, CNN, GE and HP. These companies might not have survived their trying early years without an intense focus on the core fundamentals that drive profitability and long-term growth.

In response to this back-to-basics trend, we’ve just launched a new web service, XigniteGlobalFundamentals, providing global company fundamentals for securities listed on many major exchanges outside the U.S.  The service provides market cap, earnings per share, p/e ratios, and beta for companies around the globe. Check out XigniteGlobalFundamentals for yourself.

If you’d like to know what financial market data web services and mashups can really do for you in plain English, then check out the latest NetworkWorld interview with the expert (our CEO Stephane!).

Click on the image above to go to the NetworkWorld podcast.