Giles Nelson, deputy CTO of Progress Software (www.cbronline.com)
As reported by Fierce Finance IT’s Jim Kim, the financial services industry has been a leader in terms of adopting and developing IT in many ways. The investments have been massive. Many have tried to market their internal software to others, with varying degrees of success.
When it comes to high-frequency trading software, Giles Nelson, deputy chief technology officer of Progress Software, thinks the firm has a lot to offer nonfinancial firms. Complex event processing is something that in his mind has lots of non-Wall Street applications. As Tech Europe notes, any company that buys and sells anything might benefit from complex event processing software.
Consider the shipping industry, in which Progress has made in-roads. If their software “can provide better information on the location of ships, with more accurate weather reporting, more accurate information about the logistics support, then they can get ships to ports on time. Furthermore they will have proceeded at a speed that will have managed the port availability, so they were burned less fuel. They estimate it could save up to $100,000 in oil per year for a large vessel. Considering there are 80,000 large vessels on the seas at any one time, you can see this is an awful lot of money to save.”
Another client, a theme park company, is using their software to more quickly process customers waiting in line. “You give the customer a band with an RFID tracker in it, so you know where they are in the park. If they pre-book rides then you can direct them around the park in real time in such a way as to make sure they are directed towards rides with the shortest queues. That will get more people through your rides, and give the customers a much better experience.”
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