Java on the street - Wall Street firms use language for analysis applications - Technology Information - Brief Article

Software Magazine, Oct, 1997 by Julekha Dash

In the midst of what some users see as overheated Java hype, Wall Street firms are taking cautious first steps towards building and deploying Java applications. Doug Gardner, a VP with J.P. Morgan's Emerging Markets Division, says his department is Using a Java front end to create an app that analyzes risk across fixed-income instruments and then displays the results.

Morgan has deployed this Java on a dozen or so desktops in New York and London. Gardner expects the number of clients to eventually reach somewhere between 50 and 100, with an expanded global deployment to Latin America and possibly Asia. Using Java is a plus for the company's global business, says Gardner, because it supports platform independence. He notes that J.P Morgan users in New York and London rely on Solaris, whereas NT will be the platform of choice in Latin America and Asia, where Solaris isn't readily available. J.P. Morgan hopes to eventually migrate all their users to NT.

"A lot of Wall Street companies are based primarily on Solaris but have an eye towards NT. And by developing in Java, you're right there," says Gardner. "You can deploy on your machines today and you won't have to do the front end as migration to NT happens."

Other financial services firms foresee Java growing in popularity among their counterparts, but in a limited capacity. Afshin Goodarzi, VP of analytics for Risk Monitors, a mortgage risk analysis company, believes the recent announcement made by Sun, IBM, and Netscape to speed Java by creating a Java Porting and Tuning Center is "more a reaction to Microsoft rather than solving a problem in the architecture."

White Plains, N.Y.-based Risk Monitors is a wholly owned subsidiary of GMAC Commercial Mortgage, which has 30 nationwide offices and handles a portfolio exceeding $26 billion. The firm is using a Java front end for an application that predicts the prepayment behavior of mortgage portfolios. Goodarzi says using a Java front end makes it easier for customers to access the application using Netscape. He considers Netscape a "good delivery vehicle" since it is available on most desktops.

Goodarzi expects Java's strength on the front end to continue, but doesn't foresee it being used for "very large number-crunching applications." Gardner agrees that mission-critical projects written in Java are still far and few in between. For a very thin client Java is fine at this point, he says. For heavy duty applications, he cautions that Java is still in its pioneering days on Wall Street and C and C are far from being displaced "We take our financial analytics that we've developed in-house and access them through Java," says Gardner. "There was no way we could have done all of the analytics that we needed to do in Java. We would have had unacceptable performance."