Finextra: Matrix has Arrived
Finextra has finally picked up on Morgan Stanley’s Matrix. I think BARX and Matrix are RIA’s from different angles; BARX using Ajax with one style of UX, whereas Matrix uses Flex and provides a fresher looking UX. We await a Silverlight contender in the RIA trading platform space….
“Hishaam Mufti-Bey, Matrix founder and global director at Morgan Stanley says, “The hallmarks of what would become a disruptive rather than sustained innovation would be that it was simple, accessible and convenient for clients to use in order for them to adopt it.”
The bank says that the information streams now available direct to clients, including video from its economists and trading desks, cover trade ideas and “colour” that it also distributes to its own sales team globally.”
Matt – I’m not sure what you’re definition of UX is?! Wikipedia says ‘a term used to describe the overarching experience a person has as a result of their interactions with a particular product or service…’. This is far more than just looking slick!
Whilst certainly not ‘black is the new black’ like Matrix, and perhaps not taking the revolutionary approach to UX, BARX FI provides an evolutionary improved UX. For example: The trading interactions seem well thought out and geared to the user’s workflow. The user-configurability of the UI allows each user to design the information flow to best suit their particular needs. Surely these are both examples of a good UX?
I also don’t think this is really down to technology choice (Flex VS Ajax VS Silverlight), though they all have their strengths, but more down to a different approach to the user’s needs…
What’s not in doubt is that Matrix and BARX have certainly re-focussed the spotlight on providing multi-asset channels that emphasise bank’s relationships with their clients.
I have edited the posting to hopefully correct the miss-representation – probably due to blogging late at night again
Thanks Matt – I’m fairly passionate about UX too, so thought it worth a mention!
I have seen Matrix, impressive.
In terms of trading system I see it supports FX and Swaps but they say also Bonds and Block Futures shortly and new to come… How can Morgan Stanley roll-out all these products at such a fast rate into the same user interface ?
What kind of technology they use under the hood to glue all this together ? It is clear that there is no Caplin mock-up behind.
This seems to grow towards the size of Autobahan but with a shiny buy-side and much faster in terms of time to market.
Not sure what you mean by “Caplin mock-up”, Anthony?
Caplin Trader is designed to solve exactly this problem – how to present many different products in the same front-end – and is used like this within a number of major banks. Often these are backed by completely separate systems and even technology platforms (Java/C++/.Net).
However, Matrix isn’t built with Caplin Trader – from what I’ve heard it’s a Flex front-end with a custom-built middle-tier glue to the various systems. I’ve no idea how easy or not it will be to pull in new products to the platform…
Computerworld 2009 Laureate Awards http://www.cwhonors.org/documents/The_Laureate_09.pdf, page 104 (top left)
Caplin mock-up? How can a product be a mock up? Look at what Barcap has done with Caplin? Sorry I just don’t “get” your comment? Could you clarify a little?
I meant that Matrix does not look and feel like a clone of the typical Caplin Trader front-end …
I understand this Matrix is all custom built over a Flex API … how is the data streaming done ?
Caplin is an interesting framework to put together custom buy-side front ends, if I look at Barcap.
For example it does the streaming.
However it looks puerile to me when you go to the trading system functionality, the bank or the system integrator has to do all the job.
Caplin lacks financial business objects, relying on bank systems for everything apart delivering data and presenting them to the buy-side. That is not little at all ! Dont misunderstand me !
However talking about trading systems, or as you call them SDP, I thought we should demand more from a product like Caplin.
My view is that it requires eons for integration with different products, not guiding system integrators at all.
Wondering whether Matrix was based on something like that or more interesting …
Anthony, just to reply to your comments on Caplin integration work and Caplin’s support for financial business objects -
Although you do need to glue the platform components like the trade tickets, blotters, quick trade tiles, instrument trees etc.. together with proprietary trade engines (and perhaps customise the trading workflow to achieve differentiation), the Caplin platform also has adapters for off-the-shelf execution engines where the integration work is done for you; in that case the bank or system integrator has little work.
Regarding the orientation around financial business objects – the platform does come with analytics engine for data validation, spreading, crossing, instrument look up, filtering, sorting etc.. and comes with complex trade workflows, orderbooks, timeseries, market data records with an entitlement engine for that supports shared accounts, branches, subsidiaries, white labelling, sales traders etc.. so that sort of financial orientation is meant to give banks a head start when building a single-dealer portal.
Could you clarify what sort additional functionality you would like to see?
Thank you,
very interesting article