As technology providers we are highly committed to relate to people. We want to take the interplay between our system and users and make them feel more "natural".To make this happen, we need to figure out where users want automation and where they want deeper interaction.
In principle, developing anything of consequence is really challenging. Quant finance systems are complex. To make them simple is hard. And it is even harder, if you develop for one click users, workbook users, developers and system integrators.
The idea of simplification is not only complex from a technological point of view it is a complex process of understanding objectives, work flows, behavior, …
For some simplicity means effortless perfection, others want effortless creation.
For financial practitioners, having everything in workbooks, Excel is the tool for simplicity and it is our task to provide automation triggered by Excel front-ends overcoming Excel's disadvantages - poor data management, information overwriting, information flattening, ..
Portfolio managers want task scheduling, automation and result aggregation.
Quant developers want to express complex financial behavior in understandable and computational programs. Our response to this ca be found here, here and here. Wit an example on A VaR Scenario.
And we built a system that ties everything together. The UnRisk FACTORY It is built of 800.000 lines of C++, 350.000 lines of Wolfram Language, 400.000 lines of Java code, SQL, Java Server Pages, …. It supports a web front-end, the UnRisk Financial Language front-end and Shhh, we have plans to add an Excel front-end (with data base interaction!).
For effortless perfection and creation.
Picture from sehfelder
