The Fintech Open Source Foundation (FINOS) today announced three new silver members including Canonical, the publisher of the Ubuntu Linux distribution, Databricks, an open core cloud data and AI company and Codethink, a provider of open source engineering services. FINOS’ new silver members showcase the increasing importance of commercial open source within fintech and financial services, consistent with its trajectory in the broader technology landscape. As evidence of this trend, according to a recent study by Research and Markets, the open source service industry is expected to grow at a CAGR 24.2 percent in the 2020-2025 period.

“Long gone are the days where open source was solely driven by volunteers and hobbyists. Without substantial investments from commercial open source companies, open source would not have achieved sustainability nor ubiquitous adoption,” said Gabriele Columbro, executive director of FINOS. “We are excited to welcome our new members, as each embodies a tangible example of a successful commercial open source business model, while remaining true to their community roots. I hope to see more fintechs following their example as the opportunity is massive in the financial services industry.”      

Canonical Simplifies Hybrid Multi-Cloud Fintech Operations with Ubuntu

Nine out of the top 10 U.S. and EU financial institutions use Ubuntu on public clouds. With MAAS for physical data centre automation and Juju’s Charmed Operator Framework for model-driven operations on Kubernetes and traditional environments, Canonical is transforming the quality, cost, security, speed of software operations and open source application management through community-maintained ops and integration code, much like its community did for Linux with Ubuntu.

“The imperative to gain efficiencies and accelerate innovation is changing the face of open source in finance,” said Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical. “With increasing regulatory pressures, rising customer expectations, and digital disruption, open source done the Canonical way helps financial institutions accelerate time-to-market and free up resources to focus on customer-centric innovations that provide true business value.”

Databricks Brings Deep Industry Expertise in Open Data, Standardized Data and AI Models to FINOS Community 

As the financial services industry is the largest generator and user of data, Databricks, which operates a cloud-SaaS open source business model, has over 500 customers globally across banking, insurance and capital markets. Open source is at the centre of Databricks’ mission, and was founded by the original creators of Apache Spark ™ , Delta Lake and MLflow. Together with FINOS, Databricks aims to enable incumbents and challengers to embrace open data standards, open source technologies and industry best practices.

“Open source enables data and AI to become central in the everyday products and services that financial institutions provision,” said Alexandra Mysak, Director of Sales, Financial Services at Databricks. “Leveraging the power of open source will help the finance industry become more innovative and move away from product centricity towards customer centricity. For example, we still see ample opportunities to drive innovation via standardization and collaboration in areas such as sustainable finance.”

 Codethink’s Engineering Expertise Will Provide Support, Integration and Help Accelerate Open Source Projects

Codethink has a long history of being involved in open source communities and projects. By joining FINOS, the community will benefit from its expertise and future contributions to open source projects. Companies collaborate with Codethink to bring crucial products to market faster, improve codebases, optimize workflows and reduce overall software costs. Currently, the company is involved with FINOS’ Cloud Service Certification project. In addition, the company participates with the Legend project, which includes a collaboration with the recent Morphir contribution.

“We see great opportunity for commercial open source in the FINOS community and finance industry in general,” said Tristan Maat, Software Engineer at Codethink. “It is vital to the improvement of reaction time to regulatory changes, reducing maintenance burdens and barriers to entry. With less overhead, the financial services industry will benefit from the adoption of new technologies.”

With these new members, FINOS membership has also grown to 46, a 31 percent increase in the past six months. To get involved with the community, please visit: https://www.finos.org/membership-benefits#become-a-member.