In this article, Mike O’Hara & Adam Cox speak to Andy Slight of The Test People, Chris Smith of KPMG, Jonathan Bell of DMW Group and Matt Barrett of Adaptive Consulting, about opportunities for financial services firms to undergo digital transformation, a concept some companies have thus far been slow to embrace.

The benefits are proven in other sectors, but banks and other financial firms have been cautious about adopting many of the new technologies that make transformation possible. What’s holding them back, how can they overcome those hurdles and what advantages can they expect if they do?

In this article, Mike O’Hara & Adam Cox speak to Rob Bath of Digital Realty, Hirander Misra of GMEX Technologies, Stuart Turner of Avenir Technologies, Joseph Kitamirike of ALTX Africa Group, Kristian Schach Møller of Agricultural Commodity Exchange for Africa and Alisher Shernazarov of Central Asian Stock Exchange, about a radical new concept in trading: the emerging market trading hub.

By linking far-flung exchanges from a neutral site in a developed market location, can such a trading hub essentially brings the market to the liquidity rather than the other way around and revolutionise the relationship between venues and the investors who want to access them, offering significant benefits to all parties?

In this article, Mike O’Hara asks Ash Gawthorp of The Test People, Daryl Elfield of KPMG, and RDavid Vincent of smartTrade to assess the testing challenges facing firms looking to deliver banking and financial services via mobile apps.

With so many of us increasingly relying on mobile devices to organise our lives, it is no surprise that banks and other financial services firms are looking at how best to use this channel to market. But to exploit new channels successfully, what factors do they need to bear in mind to ensure their mobile apps enhance the customer experience, not distract from it further.

In this article, Mike O’Hara & Adam Cox talks to Matt Barrett & Olivier Deheurles of Adaptive Consulting, Jan Machacek & Martin Zapletal of Cake Solutions, Rob Bath of Digital Realty, Matthew Lempriere of Telstra Global Enterprise & Services and Ray Bricknell of Behind Every Cloud about how the cloud and the use of ‘microservices’ can transform operations for financial firms, bringing greater productivity and agility without sacrificing security.

The technology may be complex, but the message is simple: the cloud and use of microservices can bring serious benefits that go well beyond reducing costs.

In this article, Mike O’Hara talks to Brian Ross & Jim Timmins of FIX Flyer, Sassan Danesh of Etrading Software, Rob Bath & Stef Weegels of Digital Realty and Toby Corbalis of Bridline about the the future role of managed services in increasing the efficiency and reducing the cost of the FIX connectivity infrastructures of banks and brokers.

Although FIX has been around for a long time, it is now branching out into new asset classes and reaching further along the transaction value chain, deep into the post-trade arena. Could these new frontiers offer an opportunity to reassess existing FIX implementations and benefit from emerging service models, such as the cloud?

In this article, Mike O’Hara and Adam Cox talk to Stéphane Tyč, CEO of network provider McKay Brothers, Tariq Rashid, a long-time data centre executive, and Alexandre Laumonier, market microstructure expert and author of the "Sniper in Mahwah" blog, about the current state of play in the microwave industry.

Microwave transmission of data has been used in the telecommunications industry for decades. So why is there such a renewed level of interest in the technology today, particularly amongst trading firms in the financial markets space? And what are the challenges that firms face when looking to utilise microwave and millimetre wave networks?