The Importance of Ecosystem

The term ecosystem has historically been tied to ecology, and refers to the interconnectedness of a community of organisms and the environment in which they reside. In more recent years, the term has been adopted by the software industry to describe the relationship between a community of related software solutions that service the needs of a business community that requires them.

The traditional app store model—like those popularized by Apple and Google—relies on the monopoly of a platform provider and the sales channels they’ve created. Participants in the app store pay to sell their wares in the store, usually through a revenue share model that sees a split of sales proceeds go to the owner of the store. But software ecosystems don’t have to be structured this way.

The Finsemble Partner Ecosystem, for example, takes the opposite approach, providing software vendors with free access to Finsemble and without collecting any revenue share from sales. Furthermore, vendors are encouraged to distribute their new desktop compatible software through their own channels, not just within Finsemble’s catalog. This interconnected model benefits all parties involved.

Independent software vendors (ISVs) gain unprecedented flexibility

ISVs expect their apps to exceed their customers’ expectations. While browser-based apps offer many advantages, institutions continue to rely heavily on desktop software for a variety of reasons, including the cost and effort of uprooting their traditional technology stack.

Finsemble provides a way for vendors to deliver their web application to their client base on the desktop. ISVs use Finsemble to marry the versatility of HTML5 with a desktop platform capable of incorporating legacy desktop applications.

Furthermore, these applications gain a host of new capabilities when used in Finsemble, including multi-window support, workspace management, context sharing, drag-and-drop abilities and more; in short, their components can interact with any other Finsemble application—modern or legacy, in-house or third-party.

Partners who were previously offering single page applications in the browser can now offer their clients a desktop version of their software even if that client is not a Finsemble customer. The vendor provides clients with a simple installer that will have them up and running with their software in minutes.

Not only do our Ecosystem partners not pay us, neither do their clients pay us for using partner applications within Finsemble. We’re so sure that our partners’ clients will be wowed by the Finsemble magic interwoven in the applications they use that they’ll want to connect all of their systems using Finsemble.

Only in that way—by creating magic that makes someone say, “How do I make all of my applications speak to one another through Finsemble?”— do we create a new Finsemble customer.

Connecting community and environment

The Finsemble platform is the perfect environment in which to showcase community through the interconnectedness of partner and client applications.

We know from our capital markets clients that their workflows can be vastly complicated, including:

• Numerous programs
• Data pulled from multiple applications
• Replication of data in multiple applications
• Work spread across multiple monitors
• An endless process of data mining, searching, discovery, and data entry, all because no one system has been able to unify it all…until now

Finsemble acts as the great unifier, providing a system of services that create never-before-possible connections between third-party and in-house applications. Clients assemble the exact desktop they want out of any number of application components. They  create links between those components programmatically and through convenient front-end controls like linker channels. Applications speak to one another, data is transferred, and workflows are automated in ways that simply wouldn’t be possible outside such a framework.

A balanced system

Ecosystems thrive due to a balance struck between the environment and its resident components. The Finsemble Partner Ecosystem continues to grow, introducing a carefully cultivated list of partner applications for a thriving community of client users.

Balance is further achieved through adherence to a standard—in this case, the FDC3 standard introduced by FINOS and supported by Finsemble. This open standard ensures consistency and a reliable development and end user experience. A stable environment provides an opportunity for innovation in terms of workflow optimization, efficiency gains, and affordable digital transformation.

Whether you’re a prospective partner interested in deploying to the desktop and supercharging your application, or a possible Finsemble client curious about how to make all of your applications speak to one another, we’d love to hear from you.