Mashups are bad for technology jobs
Financial services firms are likely to invest more cash in 'mashups' technology this year than ever before, but far from creating more jobs it could actually take some work away from techies.
For those unfamiliar with the term, we're not talking about a typical Saturday night in a Walkabout pub. Rather, mashups are web-based applications which draw in data from multiple sources and filter it through a single application.
For capital markets firms battling with increased volatility, getting access to various sources of information is more valuable than ever. And, according to research by Aite Group, financial firms will spend $35m on mashups this year.
Adam Honore, senior analyst at Aite Group, suggests many firms already use mashups for market alerts, research and trading dashboards and proprietary data sets for trading.
Predictably, though, firms' motivation for increased take-up of these products is cost-cutting.
As Jason Jones, president of long/short equity hedge fund HighStep Capital told Wall Street & Technology previously they would have hired programmers to create a similar tool, but now there's no need.
But a mashup, he says, allows him "to quickly figure out ways to extract lots of data from the Net. Without it, it would take days upon days to do. Now there's no way I could do without it. And you don't need to be an engineer to use it."
Similarly, Larry Bowden, VP, portals and mashups at IBM, says they can by-pass the IT department:
"The biggest issue that has been running around is pent-up demand for new applications, because there aren't enough programmers and highly skilled people to build all the applications people are interested in."
