Embracing the cloud. Microservices. Easier integrations. Star CTO David Rowland offered Synergy ’22 attendees these three takeaways and more in London, including how Star is building the best platform to keep firms compliant
Throughout history, technological advancements in products and services can be seen in plain sight. Take cars, for example, which have gone through tremendous transformations from their inception up until today, with continuous innovations and improvements to ensure long-term success. With software, the advancements aren’t necessarily so obvious, but they matter equally. At StarCompliance, we believe a tech stack needs to be continually improved, so users have access to the best tech to streamline workflows, stay compliant, and gain actionable insights from their data. This means investment: time, money, and resources properly directed to make the right advancements happen at the right time. Here are three ways Star is currently doing just that.
1. THE MOVE TO MICROSERVICES
Every five or six years, companies typically go through large transformations. This is because technology changes. If businesses don't stay on top of such changes, catching up then becomes a huge project, but it must be done for companies and their clients to move with the times and take advantage of important innovations.
By using microservices, this type of change can be processed incrementally, without businesses having to undergo a multi-year project to complete. Microservices are a software architectural design and development practice that allows single applications to be released independently from each other under one holistic offering in a service platform. Microservices give businesses the agility to react and quickly adapt to market demand and in the process release improvements faster, all with less risk: as one microservice application cannot potentially affect the others in an adverse manner. Firms can also use microservices to pick and choose technology that best suits their goals, especially as other applications might leverage different sets of technologies.
The result? Companies can save an enormous amount of time while using the latest and best technologies to improve their tech stack, as well as offer the benefits of these advancements sooner for their clients. This is exactly what we’ve been doing at Star, and will continue to do for the next 18 months and beyond.
2. EMBRACING THE CLOUD AND SOFTWARE-AS-A-SERVICE
Software-as-a-Service, a.k.a., SaaS. This is software that’s based in the cloud. You’ve no doubt heard of this, but why is it useful? Simply put, the cloud is a great enabler for allowing businesses like Star to increase its value to clients and to improve time to market with best-in-class features and products. On the client side, the cloud also omits the burden of needing to invest huge sums in their own infrastructure.
There’s no getting around it in this day and age: the cloud and Software-as-a-Service need to be part of a company’s tech stack. If firms like ours leverage cloud and SaaS solutions, they can build capabilities to manage products faster: products that are much more capable than if we were to build everything ourselves. Scalability and redundancy are also critical features of SaaS and the cloud, for both firm and client.
3. A FOCUS ON CONNECTIVITY AND EASE OF INTEGRATION
It’s important for any Star solutions and services to be able to integrate seamlessly with a client’s own technology. This is something we’re always thinking about during development. By being able to connect to existing systems directly, clients can consolidate their data more quickly, easily, and completely. This improves the decision making process and accelerates workflows. It also increases the velocity of change for an organization’s technology, as new capabilities can be implemented with less fuss. We try and give our clients options when it comes to integrations, as needs and requirements differ. For example, some prefer using simple files with attendant tasks to synchronize their data. Others want more sophistication—perhaps more real time-transfer of data—so we also offer APIs.
Technology modernization can mean different things to different people and to different organizations. At StarCompliance, it means keeping up with the latest regtech through a combination of investment, in-house innovation, and partnering with the best fintech providers, and then passing the benefits along to you.