platform on SWiK

Mobility Blues

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 14:56:05 -0700

"I don't wanna be a sharecropper on Massa Steve's plantation."

Using EclipseLink on the SpringSource Application Platform

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:56:28 -0700

This week the EclipseLink team announced the release of EclipseLink 1.0. I've been using EclipseLink on S2AP for a while now; in fact, I used EclipseLink when developing our JPA load-time-weaving support. We've yet to upgrade our internal usage to 1.0 - our beta9 was tagged just before the announcement - but I wanted to demonstrate [...]

Alfresco - Open Source Enterprise Content Management (CMS) including Web Content Management

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 05:53:56 -0700

Banking as a Platform 2

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:53:10 -0700

Last week in Banking as a Platform, I discussed how banks might use the platform concept (for example as discussed by Tom Steinthal in a post called Some Thoughts on Platforms in Financial Services) to support radical improvements in customer experience and service.

Tom has now replied. In a post called Platforms - Are They Coming, he mentions a banking product called PNC Virtual Wallet. [PNC Bank Takes on Mint & Quicken with PNC Virtual Wallet, NetBanker, July 14th 2008]

The NetBanker article mentions several companies offering financial management platforms that apparently sit on top of (and aggregate) online services from regular banks. These financial management platforms include Geezeo, Jwaala, Mint, Wesabe. I haven't studied these in detail, but from a quick review of the material on their respective websites they look fairly similar, and a lot more like real platforms (according to the criteria stated in Tom's earlier post) than PNC Virtual Wallet. Although PNC deserves some praise for innovating at all, I can't see anything very radical in the PNC innovation.

Among the comments to the NetBanker article, I note contributions from Aaron Patzer (CEO of Mint) and Andrew Taylor (CTO of Jwaala). This is not the first time these two have clashed in public: in September, Andrew put a post onto the Jwaala blog called Hi I'm Mint. Ugg., which prompted a robust reply from Aaron.

Behind the rivalry between Mint and Jwaala is a fundamentally important difference in platform strategy. Mint appears to be selling to customers - "use our platform to get a better service over and above your existing bank accounts and other financial service providers". Whereas Jwaala appears to be selling to banks - "use our platform to provide better services to your customers". (Back in 2005, I noted a similar dilemma for software billing specialist LaCayla - whether to market its services upwards or downwards. There are some complex questions of platform strategy here, as I indicated in my post on two-sided markets over on the Asymmetric Design blog. There are also questions of trust.)

I really hope that innovations like these are successful, but there is a lot of work to do. Big banks like PNC may offer a watered-down and "safe" version of the innovation, but they might possibly have mixed feelings about the outcome. Meanwhile we can expect a lot of exciting stuff to be produced by small energetic companies with disputatious senior management; but it will be interesting to see how far they get with or without the active collaboration of any of the big banks.

Json.NET - Home

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:54:26 -0700

OpenID

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:51:13 -0700

Optimsys

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 06:54:20 -0700

Open Handset Alliance

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:46:20 -0700

iPhone: The New Personal Computer - ReadWriteWeb

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 07:47:26 -0700

Rich Ajax Platform (RAP)

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 01:44:17 -0700

Eclipse Platform

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 21:50:48 -0700

Why Identi.ca is important

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 21:49:18 -0700

XulBooster.org

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 04:51:21 -0700

The XulBooster project is working towards providing a XUL Integrated Development Environment (IDE) Plug-in for the Eclipse platform . This project will include

XulBooster.org

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 04:50:37 -0700

<sep/>project is working towards providing a XUL Integrated Development Environment (IDE) Plug-in for the Eclipse platform . This project will include many editors and wizards to develop Xul Extension for Firefox<sep/>

XulBooster.org

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 04:47:44 -0700

The XulBooster project is working towards providing a XUL Integrated Development Environment (IDE) Plug-in for the Eclipse platform . This project will include many editors and wizards to develop Xul Extension for Firefox (and in the future for Thunderbir

Mozilla Labs " Blog Archive " Introducing Weave

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:49:11 -0700

We'll

Marketcetera Trading Platform: index

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:48:41 -0700

Kaltura - Open Source Video Platform

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 17:49:22 -0700

Can Browser Add-ons Be Businesses? - ReadWriteWeb

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 15:49:12 -0700

Welcome to Project Caroline | Project Caroline

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 15:49:10 -0700

socialmedian: Apple's iPhone App Store: 500 Apps, Most Under $10, Coming Today? (AAPL)

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:01:44 -0700

Main Page - Crystal Space 3D

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 02:50:55 -0700

Crystal Space is our main project. It is a free cross-platform software development kit for realtime 3D graphics, with particular focus on games.

Claroline . NET - Demo

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 01:49:30 -0700

An academic platform to handle communication with staff and students.

Can Browser Add-ons Be Businesses? - ReadWriteWeb

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:50:23 -0700

Banking as a Platform

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:50:25 -0700

Searching for "Business as a Platform", I come across a post by Tom Steinthal, the Financial Services chief of nGenera, called Some Thoughts on Platforms in Financial Services.

Tom lists a few criteria of a good platform.

extensibility, open
utility beyond utility envisioned by the designers
foundational (not sure what he means by that)
simplicity, focus
powerful, scaleable
open
incorporating, facilitating and/or leveraging collaboration
accessible and/or leveraging the Internet (reachable via Web Services and/or SaaS?)

In a later post (more on platforms ...), Tom states that platforms don't always justify the cost and risk. "There will be many cases where making the solution a platform will not be worth it."

Tom suggests that financial services might learn something useful from platforms like Amazon. Sure they could, but will they? Are they? There are loads of services that I'd like my bank to provide me with, and I can see exactly how the platform concept would give an innovative bank a cost-effective and powerful way to provide me with services like these, but (sadly) I don't see much evidence that banks (at least in the UK) are interested in that kind of innovation.

I really like the idea of a bank providing services to its customers that are flexible and secure, allowing the customers (or their financial advisors) to compose these services into customized solutions. I also like the idea of financial advisors actually doing some real work, rather than simply earning commission by selling me some fancy investment plan. There may also be opportunities for social provision - voluntary agencies and community groups creating easy-to-use customized banking services for selected target groups.

But is that going to happen? Browsing further back in Tom's blog, I find a link to an article by Penny Crosman called The Future of SOA on Wall Street (Wall Street and Technology, Feb 2008). Banking platforms are mentioned, but only as a means to internal flexibility, reuse and interoperability, not yet as a mechanism for providing radical improvements to customer experience and service.

However, I live in hope.

joeandrieu.com " Blog Archive " More on Level 4 Platforms

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 12:47:49 -0700

Rich Ajax Platform (RAP)

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 13:51:42 -0700

The RAP project enables developers to build rich, Ajax-enabled Web applications by using the Eclipse development model, plug-ins with the well known Eclipse workbench extenstion points, JFace, and a

Mozilla Labs " Blog Archive " Introducing Weave

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 11:49:30 -0700

Manyou开发者指南

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 05:49:35 -0700

本开发者指南是 Manyou Open Platform(MYOP) 的官方说明网站,旨在帮助开发者基于 Manyou Open API 开发基于 UCenter Home 的应用程序。Manyou Open API 是一套基于 Web Service 协议,实现与 UCenter<sep/>

Miro - free, open source internet tv and video player

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 05:49:34 -0700

A free, open source Internet TV and video player that can automatically download videos from RSS-based channels. Features a built-in BitTorrent client.