Decentralisation of Technology

Our thoughts on the biggest technology disruptor heading our way.

We see decentralisation of technology as a key theme over the coming years, delivered through several separate but related mechanismsDecentralisation is a progression of factors we have seen in recent years: the adoption of AI and algorithmic tradingblockchain and related technologies such as smart contracts; and a move from monolithic to ecosystem platforms. Decentralisation becomes attractive to the commodity industry, primarily as a technology enabler, and in turn as cost and risk reducer.  

 

From a technology perspective, we see a greater push towards more open standards and interfaces (APIs)likely standardising on REST APIswith GraphQL waiting in the wings. As transactional volumes increase, the need to have low overhead, low latency APIs becomes paramount. 

 

Vendors not already providing cloud-native solutions will need to get on board with distributed technologies such as containerisation of deployed apps through technologies like Docker, built on orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes. Containerisation allowfor rapid “right-scaling of resources to support peaks and troughs of data throughput and processingrather than the very costly approach of provisioning the biggest serveravailable, all running 24/7. 

Containerisation supports the microservices concept

Containerisation also supports the microservices concept: small, lightweight, rapid, concise services providing a well-defined capability, built around reliability, low-latency and low-cost. A logical development from microservices is serverlessmassively scalable and reliable components that are the ultimate in services computing efficiency 

 

Another decentralisation push will be to promote more open-source useOpen-source hasn’t taken off within the commodities sector; vendors are maybe reluctant to commit effort to a riskier commercial model, and traders perhaps want to keep their models proprietary. There are, however, opportunities to build out standardised “plumbing” that could provide a bedrock on which componentscontainers, services and microservices combine to provide a “sum of parts” solution betterfaster and cheaper than monolithic systems. 

 

In conclusion, ecosystems of specialist vendors working together, using these newer decentralised models will offer faster, cheaper, more efficient and more connected technology solutions to the sector. 

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