Financial Industries and Cloud Services- Trends and Innovations
Financial industry has been through tough path post 2008 recession. It went through gigantic turmoil, and its on a restructuring phase. One of the foremost industries to adopt Information technology is Financial sector. Although most companies are adopting to Cloud at a faster pace, the financial sector remained an exception. Selling cloud computing to financial services firms could seem problematic. The sector is renowned for its reluctance to give up control over operations, which is exactly what is involved with the cloud. Added to this is a mountain of regulation. However due the restructuring and re-evaluation of process and focus areas at the financial firms is helping the intrusion of cloud based services into the Financial sector.
Let us look at a recent innovation in this space. One the most foremost successful cloud service has been started by wall street for the FX market (Foreign exchange), which is called as ESN (Electronic Settlement Network) Volume growth for FX market continued unabated while financial markets were in turmoil over the credit crunch. The tier 2 and tier 3 banks have less margin in FX market because of the higher cost on per transaction. This would really curb the them entering into the segment. This made the volume on demand, for all the players of FX market big and small by creating ESN.
Let us take a bank “X” which is tier 1 bank and bank “Y” which is a tier 2 bank. Both were severely affected by the credit crunch. They started looking for operational efficiency and newer ways to improve there business operations and improve there business in those areas where the financial sector is not severely affected. FX (Foreign Exchange) has been place where the banks were targeting to improve there business in. The Bank “X” and Bank “Y” found Electronic settlement network as an option to improve their FX market which has volume trading and has got all the advantages of SaaS usage.
So, Bank “X” being tier 1 bank entered into huge volumes of FX, Cash and OTC (over the counter) derivatives without enhancing the existing IT infrastructure and operational expenditure instead opted for the On-demand ESN. For Bank “X” ESN provides a trade Capacity “insurance policy” and during periods of high volume, banks can switch a percentage of their post-trade activity to ESN to reduce queues in their own infrastructure. ESN helped the Bank “X” to go for high volume trading, but removing the overhead of planning for huge network and infrastructure improvements and getting into the pay per use ESN from Wallstreet.
Bank “Y” had to invest a lot for per transaction on FX trading, and being a tier 2 bank they were not going for high volume trading. So they needed a third party which can lower the per transaction cost on FX trading which ESN was the there exact solution. ESN enables the smaller banks to reduce processing costs and allow them to get into the market without establishing there own infrastructure and also providing cheaper per transaction cost on FX trade for there comparatively lower volumes. Now Bank “X” and Bank “Y” go to ESN as a single place to collectively process for its members with associated economies of scale, introducing a transaction based model for processing FX, Cash and OTC (over the counter) derivatives. The utility provides capacity, functionality and operations on demand and sets the benchmark for the lowest trade processing costs in the industry.
We strongly believe, This phase is just a beginning once the design for privacy concepts come up to level of building the cloud computer services the financial sector will move into the area of getting things into being with cloud advantages. There are legislations which are coming for cloud computing, which would definitely help to have far better SLA’s for Financial sectors, which would protect and understand the needs of Financial sector.
Imaginea has a strong understanding of cloud computing, its implications from a technology stand point, security and privacy requirements in a on demand computing environment. Over the years Imaginea has also been a strong technology services provider for some of the best names in the BFSI sector. We think we are thus positioned uniquely to help leverage our unique combination of technology and sector understandings to help companies in this space innovate more.
Setting up Svn Repository over apache2 easy and quick:
Step1>Downloading and Installing Svn modules and dependencies :
Download the most recent distribution tarball from the below mentioned URL :
http://subversion.tigris.org/servlets/ProjectDocumentList?folderID=260&expandFolder=74
Subversion depends on a number of third party tools and libraries.The Subversion has a package containing the minimal prerequisite libraries (Apache Portable Runtime, serf,neon,sqlite-amalgamation and Zlib) called the “dependency package” tarball or zipfile.
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You can simply unpack the dependency package “on top of” the Subversion package; for example, if you are using a .tar.gz bundle on Unix, you could type: $ tar xzvf subversion-1.x.x.tar.gz $ tar xzvf subversion-deps-1.x.x.tar.gz $ cd subversion-1.x.x
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and then use the standard GNU procedure to compile: -
$ ./configure - On Unix systems, the ‘./configure’ script will tell you if you are missing the correct version of any of the required libraries or tools. (We can use the said command with prefix –enable maintainer mode or other prefixes as desired.)
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$ make
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$ make install
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Test and verify the above setup by running “make check” at the end.
Step1(a)> Building a Subversion Server:
Subversion has two servers you can choose from:svnserve and Apache.
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Svnserve is a small, lightweight server program that is automatically compiled when you build Subversion’s source.
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Apache is a more heavyweight HTTP server, but tends to have more available features which help us give a better and secure control over the Repository.
Step2> Downloading and Installing Apache2 :
Please refer to the below mentioned URL for the latest released version:
http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi
Compile the below mentioned configuration files as said below:
$ ./buildconf
$ ./configure –enable-maintainer-mode (This arg says to include debugging information.As similar we did while running the ./configure for svn as said in above process.Same setup should be followed else we can run into issues .Take this is as a feedback keep the prefixes usage as same as you do for svn & apache modules).
Compile and install apache:
$ make
$ make install
Step2(a)> Making and Installing the Subversion Apache Server Module :
Go back into your subversion working copy and run ./autogen.sh if you need to. Then, assuming Apache httpd 2.0 is installed in the standard location, run:
$ ./configure
Note: do *not* configure subversion with “–disable-shared”! mod_dav_svn *must* be built as a shared library, and it will look for other libsvn_*.so libraries on your system.
Note: If you have old subversion libraries sitting on your system,libtool will link them instead of the `fresh’ ones in your tree.Remove them before building subversion.
$ make clean && make && make install
Step 3> Configuring and authorizing Apache for Subversion:
By default you will find the httpd.conf file at the below mentioned location:
> /usr/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf
Verify the below svn modules are added in your httpd.conf file :
LoadModule dav_svn_module modules/mod_dav_svn.so
LoadModule authz_svn_module modules/mod_authz_svn.so
Note: Create a file with the name as ’svn-auth-file’ and save it under /etc directory.
Add the below mentioned svn module to the end of the httpd.conf file. This is one of the basic example for setting up your Svn repository with limited access.
<Location /repos>
DAV svn
SVNPath /absolute/path/to/repository
AuthType Basic
AuthName “Suvbersion Repository”
AuthUserFile /etc/svn-auth-file
Require valid-user
</Location>
Please refer to the below URL for other authorization options available:
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.0/svn-book.html#svn-ch-6-sect-4.4
Step 3(a)> How to add a SVN user in svn-auth-file :
1.To do this use command htpasswd -m /etc/svn-auth-file “UserName”
(Here the -m option modifies the svn-auth-file)
2.This will add a user and prompt for a password
3.Enter a desired password
4.Restart the apache server with command :/etc/init.d/httpd restart or
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
5.To delete the user . Use command htpasswd -D /etc/svn-auth-file userName
(Here the -D option delete the desired user from the svn-auth-file)
Step 4> Running the apace server with Svn plugin :
Trigger the below mentioned command:
$ /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl start or /etc/init.d/apache2 start
(This will start your apache server with effect to the recent modifications done in httpd.conf file.)
$ /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl stop or /etc/init.d/apache2 stop
(This command stops the apache server and you can re-edit your httpd.conf as and when desired and re-start your apache server to have the changes into effect).
Check /usr/local/apache2/logs/error_log to make sure it started up okay.
Step 5> Testing and using the SVN repository:
Steps to checkout and checkin some stuff to your repository :
$ svn checkout/co http://localhost/svn/repos (The most common reason this might fail due, to the permissions for reading the files from the repo DB.Make sure that the httpd process has permission to read and write to the repository).
$ svn commit/ci - This command recursively sends your changes to the SVN server. It will commit changed files, added files, and deleted files. The -m option should always be used to pass a log message to the command.
$ svn add - When you are creating a new file or directory, you need to tell the SVN server about it. This command authenticates the newly created file or directory to the SVN server.
$ svn update/up - This command syncs your local sand box with the server. If you have made local changes, it will try and merge any changes on the server with your changes on your machine.
$svn help - Provides a summary of the available commands.
Note: Please proceed to Step3 If you already have a SVN server installed on your Unix machine. If you are starting afresh ,follow the steps from the beginning.
As per my understanding I have tried to explain the setup with easy and quickly understood steps.Hope this might help to the extent of setting up your client Repository quick and easy with minimal configuration issues.If I am missing something here and if there are any valuable feedback feel free to say them.
Cloud musings!
Suddenly, everyone is looking for fuel efficient cars. That is what is happening with IT resources as well. Cloud is enabling that to happen in a very rapid and scalable manner. Over the last decade, there has been a real push to look at IT services from the service centric point of view. Businesses that have done this were able to innovate faster and provide best value to their customers.
Cloud computing has graduated and has really come out of clouds. It re-affirms the benefits of thinking at a service centric manner. Cloud computing takes the IT services to the next level by virtualizing almost everything that IT provides. A variety of Cloud services has come out of the box. Cloud providers can now provide storage, cpu and network out of the box for a fees.
Cloud could also be a threat to traditional models of software licensing. What will be the impact of Cloud computing on software development, deployment, support and maintenance?
Can a warehouse application be deployed on Cloud and offer the same level of customization and SLA’s for different customers.
Cloud has some more challenges to face. Cloud portability, security and compliance are the keys areas innovation has to happen in future to take cloud to the main stream. Location of the data in various geographies and data disposal could be a compliance issue for sensitive information.
Biggest beneficiaries and customers for the cloud are governments. Governments have huge data that needs to be stored and safeguarded. Security is one man aspect of the cloud. Governments would probably go to private clouds to optimize the resources and thereby reducing operating costs.
ISV’s and ERP companies have already embraced cloud computing and are using for their main line of businesses. Companies that need computing power have used Cloud and are using it on a pay as you go basis and saving huge costs. Cloud will make innovations in the business and could reduce barriers of entry for some businesses to get into the space, which they could not get to earlier.
Hacking in cloud. Can some one who is smart gets onto Cloud computing, really wipes all your machines, data and not even leave traces of what happened?. Auditing and control could be one of the main compliance issues as well.
Applications need to gel with cloud infrastructure seamlessly. We know for sure, how much time and energy we spent in starting a new production release, even of the machines and operating system remains same. Ability to simulate cloud environments locally and deploy in cloud infrastructure seamlessly is challenge.
At Imaginea, we think, Cloud has to be embraced in a step by step manner rather than a big bang. For service companies, there is also a point, where they will start paying more for cloud services compared when hosted in house.