We caught up with Javier Borkenztain and Robert Jakech during their preparations for ApacheCon North America to get the tea on everything new and exciting in this year’s convention. Here is what we found out.
How is ApacheCon set up this year?
After two years of remote sessions, ApacheCon North America is back live and in person on October 3rd through 6th 2022 in New Orleans, Louisiana, and the Fiter team couldn’t be more excited. Sessions will be held daily on all four days of the convention, with seven tracks presented each day. Tracks will cover diverse topics including Big Data, Search, Internet of Things, Geospatial, Community, Cassandra, and Financial Tech. Each evening will include Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions, where communities are able to participate in open discussions as well as strategize around mutual projects. ApacheCon is being sponsored by market leaders including Apple, Google, RedHat and AWS.
How is the Fiter team contributing to ApacheCon this year?
For Javier Borkenztain, this is the third consecutive time leading the Fintech Track, and he is looking forward to bringing people up to speed on how Fineract has evolved as well as sharing updates regarding Fintech within the Apache community. Robert Jakech will be presenting a session titled “Pivoting Open-Source Fintech Solutions for Big Players: Enterprise Ready CBS based on Apache Fineract” on why more and more banks are now investing in Finlabs.
How are session topics selected for Apachecon?
Session topics reflect a well-balanced mix of community, informative technical discussions, and vision of the future of open-source software. The track selection process is carried out by an appointed team from within the community from a selection of presentations submitted through a Request for Presentation (RFP) process, a process befitting of ApacheCon being a volunteer-led event and completely contributor-driven.
What is behind the trend of big players adopting Fineract?
As with any new technology, the adoption curve for Fineract started out with innovators and is now at the early adopter stage. What’s interesting but not surprising is that some of these early adopters are market leaders in the financial industry. Big banks, telcos, large fintechs are all dabbling in Apache Fineract. This trend is an early indicator of the mass adoption of Fineract and makes sense as the bigger players are realizing the potential for business growth and expansion that Apache Fineract offers.
What are the benefits of open banking services for central banks and governments?
Central banks and governments are realizing they can eliminate the middleman when issuing electronic money by using blockchain technology. The third parties previously required to issue electronic currency are no longer required. Central banks can now issue, control and distribute Central Banks Digital Currencies (CBDC’s) via blockchain technology. This is propelling the trend of governments and central banks implementing open banking services. It will be interesting to see how the competition with community-driven currencies such as Bitcoin plays out.
Open-source technology is now everywhere. In fact, it is actually impossible today to deliver software solutions without using some type of open-source technology whether at the operating system or the application level. Apache software can be found in nearly every end user laptop, mobile device, and tablet while Apache projects drive most of the Internet. Open-source software is a product of the community and offers community-driven solutions that are quickly becoming standards. Leveraging open-source software will help central banks catch up and stay relevant.
How are open-source solutions game-changers?
Open-source solutions offer freedom, flexibility and variety that has never been possible in the past. When using open source, you join a community, not a specific vendor. This is a big shift from being locked in to one vendor as was the case with proprietary software solutions. The community offers multiple resources and the flexibility and freedom of running these resources yourself. The community comes with power. Communities outperform individuals and single companies each and every time.
Joining a community offers you the benefit of the improvements a community makes in the software product, based on the vast locations, resources and knowhow of different contributors within that community. Open source is the path to the software industry’s standards. It is relatively easy to prove via open source that the proposed solution works and is scalable across multiple locations, through collaboration and the freedom to test the product.
The standardization benefit of open source is too powerful for the financial industry to disregard, since it is an industry that lacks standards. The industry is understanding the benefits of open source and is adopting these open standards to manage scalability and growth. We are therefore seeing more fintech companies in the US and Europe adopt open-source technologies.
How is the demand for innovative solutions driving change?
The open-source community is made up of people who are also customers of banks and financial institutions. The demand and pressure from the community to see innovations that make lives easier through transactions are leading central banks to adopt an “if you can’t beat them, join them” mentality. The financial sector is incredibly competitive and fast-paced with companies heavily dependent on technological innovations, flexibility, and creativity to maintain their lead. Open source provides that sweet spot, leveraging financial institutions’ ability to innovate and make changes rapidly while enjoying the support of an entire community.
With Blockchain being community-based innovation, it reflects a promise for the future of fintech; a future which offers decentralized processing, a high level of transparency and security. Blockchain’s global adoption generates pressure and momentum for the big players to adopt it, hence bringing them closer to Open-Source Solutions.
What does Fiter bring to the table?
Over the years, Fiter have accumulated a wealth of experience and insights on how the financial landscape is rapidly changing, and how Fiter’s clients are adopting core banking solutions like Apache Fineract, information Fiter can’t wait to share with ApacheCon’s audience. Reach out to us at https://fiter.io/ to find out how Fiter can help grow your business.
