Dresdner backs Linux-based software, a banking first

Eric Auchard

NEW YORK: The investment banking arm of Germany's Dresdner Bank AG has teamed
up with Silicon Valley-based CollabNet to offer an innovative system that
thrusts Linux software into the heart of the banking world.

Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein on Tuesday plans to announce the new software
system based on Linux, Apache and other "open source" Web software
tools that could radically simplify and speed how corporate clients move money
within and among banks.

And in a move that would have once been considered an anathema to the
secretive banking world, Dresdner Kleinwort plans to freely release its "openadaptor"
plumbing software to programmers in the wider "open source" community.

"Open source" refers to software that is developed, tested, or
improved through public collaboration and distributed with the idea that it must
be shared with others, ensuring an open future collaboration.

Dresdner officials said they had set up partnerships with two of the world's
three top investment banks to develop the system, known as "openadaptor,"
for connecting disparate banking software and other corporate information
systems.

"All the large companies use multiple banks and the key to them is not
to be trapped or feel trapped" into one software system, Al-Noor Ramji,
chief information officer at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, said in a phone
interview.

"If you make it easier and cheaper people tend to do more,"
Jonathan Lindsell, another Dresdner executive, referring to the willingness to
trade more securities as the cost of transaction-handling declines.

Open source software marks a radical break with proprietary software in which
the fundamental code is owned by one company, such as Microsoft Corp.'s flagship
product, the Windows operating system, or UNIX software offered by several
firms.

Uses latest Internet programming tools

In contrast to traditional private in-house systems or banking industry software
standards, openadaptor takes advantage of the latest Internet programming tools.

The system allows Dresdner software developers to team up with outside
programmers at other banks or in the Linux development world at large via a
programming site managed by CollabNet.

Open source software advocates believe the intellectual collaboration of
minds will improve the software for all involved. Individual developers or
companies are in turn free to tailor specific versions for their own
organization's uses.

Openadaptor will allow any system that can be connected to the Internet to
communicate and link with other systems, Dresdner said. Companies can plug
together their own internal systems as with those from other companies - their
suppliers, business partners or customers over the Internet.

"Enabling our clients to interact on the Web with anyone they choose
will not only increase market transparency and liquidity; it will reduce costs
and increase business for all," Ramji said in a statement to be released on
Tuesday.

"We therefore have to take fundamentally important steps such as
speeding up connectivity for all our clients even at the so-called expense of
helping our competitors," he said.

Openadaptor is built on the open source development system from CollabNet, a
Brisbane, Calif. company founded by Brian Behlendorf, a pioneer in the
development of Apache software, one of the most popular tools used to run
Web-based computers.

CollabNet's system, known as SourceCast, allows programmers to work together
via the Internet, whether or not they are actually employed by the same firm.

CollabNet is backed by a high-powered list of venture capitalists, banks and
corporate partners including Intel Corp., Sun Microsystems, Oracle Corp.,
Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Computer Corp. as well as Netscape co-founder Marc
Andreessen.

To date, it has announced software development projects with Sun,
Hewlett-Packard, Oracle and Progress Software, among others.

(C) Reuters Limited 2001.