In the ever-evolving world of technology, organizations need to keep pace with advancements to stay relevant and competitive. One of the critical aspects of this technological evolution is the transition from legacy APIs to modern ones. This article delves into the intricacies of migrating from legacy APIs to Refinitiv’s Strategic APIs, a critical step for businesses seeking to enhance their data integration and management capabilities. We also introduce The FintechBox’s tailored solutions to common challenges encountered during this transition, such as knowledge loss, lack of documentation, API complexity, and the need for specialized expertise.
As a trailblazer in the realm of digital transformation, The FintechBox has established its foothold in over 25 countries. Our solutions empower organizations to optimize their operations, particularly in the spheres of fintech and digital transformation.
Understanding Refinitiv Strategic APIs: Enhancing Data Integration
Refinitiv’s Strategic APIs provide a robust platform for data integration. These APIs allow organizations to access a wide range of financial information, including real-time and historical market data, reference data, analytics, and transactional data. By migrating from legacy APIs to Refinitiv’s Strategic APIs, businesses can achieve enhanced data integration, better manage their financial data, and unlock new opportunities for innovation.
Why Migrate From Refinitiv Legacy to Strategic APIs?
Let’s delve into the compelling reasons for transitioning from legacy APIs, such as SFC and RFA, to the more advanced Strategic APIs, including RT SDK (ETA & EMA). This migration isn’t just about keeping pace with technology; it’s about harnessing its full potential. With Strategic APIs, you can expect not just high performance but a significant enhancement in bandwidth efficiency, thanks to the RWF binary data format. The dispatching threading model, especially with EMA, is improved, ensuring optimal system performance.
Ease of use is another cornerstone of Strategic APIs, particularly with the EMA API. The benefits here are twofold: a reduction in code maintenance costs due to a smaller code footprint, and access to a wealth of resources, including comprehensive tutorials and quick start guidelines. Furthermore, these APIs are designed for the modern era, offering native cloud support with robust session management features like authentication and RTO endpoint discovery.
Configuration is streamlined for simplicity, while new capabilities, such as support for encrypted socket (openssl), ensure data security. Moreover, the open-source nature of these APIs fosters a collaborative environment with active community support, driving continuous improvement. This ensures not just the addition of new features but also ongoing support for operating systems and compilers, making it a future-proof choice for any institution looking to upgrade its digital infrastructure.
Migration Choices From Legacy to Strategic APIs
Let’s navigate through the intricate landscape of Strategic API migration, offering a clear path for your technological evolution. The decision on which Strategic API to adopt depends on your specific needs, and we present a thorough comparison to assist in this crucial choice.Its open-source nature is supported by a plethora of examples in various programming languages including Perl, Python, R, Ruby, Node.js, Go, Java, and C#. Notably, it ensures resilient connection management and failover, handled directly by the application, setting the stage for the upcoming Refinitiv Data Library, which promises ease of use with wrappers in Python, .Net, and TypeScript.
For those prioritizing ease of use and rapid development, the Enterprise Message API (EMA) is an ideal fit. Open-source and built on robust foundations like the ETA Reactor Watchlist, EMA is supported in C++ and Java, offering a rich, user-friendly experience.
On the other hand, the Enterprise Transport API (ETA) caters to scenarios demanding the highest performance and the lowest latency. This low-level API provides flexibility and fine-tuning options, supporting C and Java. While it is open-source, certain functionalities like multicast/cache are exceptions. ETA stands out for its resilience, ensuring reliable connection recovery and failover, making it a dependable choice for critical applications.
Each API brings its unique strengths to the table, and understanding these nuances is key to making an informed decision. Whether you prioritize simplicity and rapid development or require a low-level, high-performance solution, The FintechBox’s expertise guides you towards the optimal choice for your specific needs and ambitions.
The Benefits of Transitioning to Strategic APIs with The FintechBox
Transitioning from legacy APIs to Refinitiv’s Strategic APIs with The FintechBox provides numerous benefits. These include cost optimization, enhanced data-driven decision-making, improved data accessibility and quality, limitless scaling opportunities, and better regulatory compliance. Our expertise and solutions in data management in finance, custom software development, and API transition consultancy ensure a seamless and efficient migration process.
In conclusion, The FintechBox offers robust and tailored solutions for businesses looking to migrate from legacy APIs to Refinitiv’s Strategic APIs. Our consultancy services, MDI tool, and custom software development services provide a comprehensive approach to overcoming common migration challenges and unlocking new levels of productivity and innovation.
Master your Legacy API Migration.
Customer Challenges in API Migration
Legacy API migration often presents numerous challenges. Businesses may face a loss of knowledge as many legacy applications were developed years ago, and the original developers may no longer be available. This lack of knowledge can make it difficult to understand how these applications function and what business processes they support, potentially introducing errors or disrupting critical operations.
API migration can be a complex process fraught with numerous challenges. Some of these include:
- Knowledge Loss: Old legacy apps, no original developers, hard to understand processes.
- Lack of Documentation: Poor documentation complicates understanding of legacy APIs, including data structures, protocols, and security measures.
- API Complexity: Migrating from legacy APIs to strategic APIs can be challenging due to the complexity of the new APIs and the steep learning curve required to understand their documentation.
- Lack of Experience: Building a fully functional integration with strategic APIs requires specialized knowledge and expertise, which can take months to acquire.
- Finding an Expert Partner: Customers may have trouble finding a trusted partner for API migration, not knowing who the expert partners are or how to evaluate their skills and experience.
These challenges can lead to delays and errors during the migration process, as well as increased costs and risks associated with troubleshooting and maintenance.
Our Solutions to Customers’ Challenges
Consultancy Services
We offer expertise in analyzing the functionality of the customers’ legacy applications and developing a migration strategy. We work closely with our customers to understand their existing applications, data structures, and business processes to develop a customized migration plan that minimizes disruption and maximizes value.
Replacing Legacy Apps with MDI
We can replace customers’ legacy applications with our MDI (Market Data Integrator) which is utilizing Refinitiv Strategic APIs. MDI enables real-time or asynchronous data integration between Refinitiv and target systems. MDI is designed to be user-friendly, scalable, and secure, and can provide significant improvements in performance, flexibility, and functionality.
Custom Software Development
The FintechBox offers custom software development services to develop applications that utilize Refinitiv Strategic APIs. Our experienced team of developers and consultants work closely with our customers to understand their unique business needs and develop custom software solutions that leverage Refinitiv’s Strategic APIs.
The Power of MDI
Market Data Integrator (MDI) utilizes Refinitiv Strategic APIs, enabling real-time or asynchronous data integration between Refinitiv and target systems. MDI is a unified platform that allows organizations to integrate real-time market data from multiple sources into target systems. This can help organizations to improve their decision-making and risk management processes.
MDI supports a wide range of market data sources, including but not limited to Refinitiv, Bloomberg, and 360T. MDI enables real-time or asynchronous data integration between data vendor and target systems with use cases such as:
- Feeding pricing engines for rate calculations
- Risk management practices
- Back-office applications
- Mobile Applications
- Datawall
- Trading Platforms
- Corporate Portals
The Advantages of MDI
- MDI can integrate real-time data from multiple vendors simultaneously.
- This is a critical feature for organizations that need to make quick decisions based on market data.
- This allows organizations to receive only the news that is relevant to them.
- This is a powerful feature that can help organizations to gain insights into historical market trends.
Monitoring and Tracking with MDI
MDI offers a comprehensive set of monitoring and tracking features that allow organizations to keep track of the status of their market data integration. MDI’s logging and error handling system is a powerful tool that can help organizations to improve the reliability of their market data integration.
The Legacy API Migration Journey
The FintechBox has garnered substantial experience in migrating from Legacy APIs to Refinitiv Strategic APIs by successfully transitioning our own products that were previously reliant on Legacy APIs.
Our team of over 20 individuals, each with an average of +10 years of experience, are dedicated to Refinitiv projects. We have proficiency in using SFC C++, SFC Java, RFA v7 Java, RFA v8 Java, Refinitiv Real-Time SDK – Java ETA/EMA, WebSocket API. We have executed the majority of the projects with Refinitiv in different regions, majority of which are in the MENA region.
Tailored Strategies for Legacy API Migration
To address these challenges, The FintechBox offers specialized market data integration solutions. Our consultancy services provide a tailored migration strategy to Refinitiv Strategic APIs expertise in analyzing the functionality of customers’ legacy applications and developing a tailored migration strategy. We work closely with our customers to understand their existing applications, data structures, and business processes, and develop a customized migration plan that minimizes disruption and maximizes value. The FintechBox also offers next-gen digital transformation solutions and services, catering to diverse industries such as finance, insurance, manufacturing, transportation, and logistics.
The Future Migration from Refinitiv’s Legacy to Strategic APIs with The FintechBox
The core components of the Refinitiv Realtime SDK encompass two pivotal APIs. The first, the Enterprise Transport API (ETA), stands as a beacon of high performance. It’s fortified with a reactor, a value-added layer, and offers a versatile range of transports including socket, shared memory, and multicast. The second, the Enterprise Message API (EMA), is the cornerstone of rapid application development. It simplifies the encoding of RWF data and introduces advanced filtering capabilities, streamlining the development process and enhancing functionality. Together, these APIs form the backbone of the Refinitiv Realtime SDK, presenting a robust and flexible foundation for your API migration journey with The FintechBox.
At The FintechBox, we understand the challenges and complexities of API migration. As your trusted partner, we are committed to providing comprehensive solutions tailored to your specific needs. Our consultancy services, MDI platform, and custom software development are designed to ensure a smooth, efficient and successful API migration process.
In the realm of digital transformation, The FintechBox is a name you can trust. We are the expert partners you need, equipped with the skills, experience and innovative solutions to address your API migration challenges and enable your digital transformation journey.
