In this final part of the Financial Value Chain series, I'd like to address, what I think can be the most exciting parts of the Financial Value Chain.  Up to this point, it would be fairly easy to call parts 1 through 4 a common infrastructure that can be used across a number of successful industry architectures.  Sure, there are some nuances to the server and services infrastructure that are unique patterns to the financial enterprise.  But in this layer are those features that are unique to a financial enterprise and some of the SOA principles that will take the financial IT ecosystem to the future in transaction processing.

Value Added Features

Probably not the best name for this layer, so bear with the silly name whilst I explain.  There are some things common to many applications.  Data descriptions of a customer entity, concepts of an account or policy and common transactions like debits and credits.  And when it comes to an operational environment, these are the elements that provide the interfaces for system management and business interaction.  Items like non-repudiation, logging and system configuration are found here.  But it is in this layer that you will find the SOA elements of a VAN (see previous post). 

Documentation and System Support

Every system needs documentation, help and description files.  The Financial Value Chain is essentially an SDK or API set, but from there is needed sufficient documentation so that someone can deploy and integrate with the solution.  But this also include usage of WS-Discovery for the publishing of the web services.  This layer will compose the elements that are needed for monitoring and management of the application.  In an enterprise system interdependencies between applications need to be well documented.  This type of data and standardization will also make it possible to begin to benchmark business applications for price and price/performance.  In this way, applications can optimize their fiscal stability by adding value in IT features on an integrated platform.

These core layers of the Financial Value Chain provide a holistic architecture from data description, enterprise services, user collaboration to serice management for the financial enterprise.  Also by making this investment in interfaces and enterprise services the financial enterprise or finanancial software vendor can insulate themselves from radical changes in technology by focusing on the features that add value to the business and allow seamless integration.  Stay tuned for developments in this area over the course of this year.