Radically Open
OpenGamma is built on a concept of Radical Openness. While what we're doing is now the norm in many of the areas of technology at the heart of bank and hedge fund IT, it's not yet common for technology vendors specific to financial services firms. We think it represents a new way for financial technology vendors to interact with their customers, partners, and users.
Open Architecture
No risk or trading analytics application exists in a vacuum; every firm has their own infrastructure, whether bespoke or vendor-provided, that has to be part of the solution provided to end-users. That's why we designed the OpenGamma Platform from the ground up to support the complex integration requirements modern financial services firms have. We don't believe in forklift upgrades, and OpenGamma installations don't require them.
Every single component in an OpenGamma Platform installation is individually usable in bespoke applications. If all you need for your application is a single component (such as historical time series storage, calculation engine, or market data aggregation services), those can be added to a new or legacy application without using the rest of the Platform.
In addition, every single component is individually replaceable by other components. If you have an existing system (whether built in house or provided by another vendor) that you'd prefer to use rather than the OpenGamma versions, it's easy to replace our version with yours.
This flexibility goes down to the low-level infrastructure we rely on. Want to use a relational database we've not worked with before? Need to use an in-house message-oriented-middleware product? Have a special data encoding the rest of your applications rely on that you need OpenGamma to read and write data in? All of these are easy with OpenGamma. We know: we've done all of these in less than 5 days, start to finish.
Contrast that with traditional vendors in the risk and trading space: they usually start with the concept that they're the only system you have installed, require that you put all your data into their proprietary data formats and databases, and offer very few, inflexible integration points. Our Open Architecture approach is far better suited to the way financial services firms actually operate.
Open Development Methodology
We don't believe that to find out the information you need about our products you should have to run through a gauntlet of salespeople and support staff. We think whether you're evaluating a first-time installation of the OpenGamma Platform, finding out whether behavior you're seeing is a known bug or not, or trying to see what features are coming in the next release, you need the ability to find that information yourself on the internet.
Want to read our documentation? It's online. Want to see what known bugs are in the Platform? It's online. Want to see what features are getting implemented in the next releases? It's online. Want to see which developer worked on a particular API? It's online. Want to download the entire source code? It's online.
Contrast that with traditional vendors, where even getting access to documentation requires a sales or support enquiry, and where detailed information on bugs or roadmaps is considered competitive information to be shielded from customers and competitors at all costs. Our Open Development Methodology approach is far better suited to making sure you have the information you need to do your job.
Open Source
So what does Open Source really mean? It means every calculation and the code behind it is transparent. Not only can you see the underlying code behind all the calculations, you (or we, if you prefer) also have complete freedom to change the code to fit your requirements. The Platform is designed to work with and enhance your existing solutions - and opening up the code makes this task much easier.
Furthermore, Open Source software benefits from an environment of shared knowledge and constant development, where a large number of interested parties (not just the original development team) contribute to the development and debugging of the source code. So any bugs are detected and fixed quickly, and enhancements are added and shared as long as they add value.
It does not mean, however, that any adaptations you make on your OpenGamma-based solution are automatically shared with others; you will retain control of your own enhancements. We've chosen an extremely commercially-friendly Open Source license (the Apache Public License v2) so that even our competitors can download the source code and incorporate it into their products.
The Open Source Platform is free to download and use and does not require a commercial contract. We do offer some proprietary components that are provided on a commercial basis, either because there are third-party restrictions (e.g. market data integration modules that use certain IP belonging to other vendors), or because we develop functional applications on behalf of our clients. We can also provide maintenance and service contracts that help you get the most out of the Platform - however, this is not tied to the ongoing use of the Open Source code. In other words, using the Open Source Platform does not require a commercial relationship with OpenGamma.