Connamara Systems, LLC (Connamara), a provider of services to exchanges, swap execution facilities, commodity trading advisors (CTAs) and hedge funds, today announced the non-profit, industry-driven standards body for global financial trading, FIX Trading Community, awarded Connamara Systems and its founder, Jim Downs, recognition for the QuickFIX Open Source Project’s positive impact in the global trading community and FIX standard adaptation on the FIX Trading Community’s 20th Anniversary. Since QuickFIX’s launch in 2002, it is estimated that there have been nearly1 Million downloads. This number includes QuickFIX’s versions for Java and for .NET. Also receiving an award was Oren Miller and a small engineering team from Thoughtworks for their role in the creation of QuickFIX.
QuickFIX was originally conceived by Oren Miller while an employee at Thoughtworks. The first release of QuickFIX was a collaboration of Mr. Miller, Jim Downs, founder of Connamara Systems, and a small engineering team at Thoughtworks. The QuickFIX project was the securities industry's first open source FIX engine used by trading firms to save time and money by providing easy and reliable Financial Information eXchange (FIX) protocol connectivity. QuickFIX has enabled fund managers, brokers, exchanges, and vendors the benefits of FIX connectivity without incurring time and cost associated with commercially available, or custom-developed FIX engines.
The FIX Protocol is immensely successful. The adoption of FIX continues to increase. FIX is used in more than 150 countries as the primary protocol for trading. FIX supports all asset classes (equities, fixed income, derivatives, FX).
QuickFIX was a key enabler in the growth, quality, and adoption rate of the FIX Protocol. QuickFIX created a de facto standard within a standard, which allowed firms to quickly and economically begin electronic trading. QuickFIX helped to resolve interoperability problems across different implementations of the FIX Protocol. QuickFIX defined a simple programming interface that has been adopted by commercial vendors. QuickFIX was a key enabler in frontier and emerging markets in implementing FIX for both exchanges and market participants. The QuickFIX data dictionary format has served as an industry accepted service definition for FIX service offerings.
The award was presented at the FIX Trading Community Americas Regional Meeting In Chicago. It was presented by Jim Northey, Senior Partner at LaSalle Technology Group and Co-chair of the Global Technical Committee of the FIX Trading Community, and Courtney Doyle, Operations Director of the FIX Trading Community.
Jim Northey states: “The simplicity, quality, and utility of QuickFIX has withstood the test of time. Every time I go to a new part of the world, be it in Africa, Latin America, or Asia to teach the FIX Protocol, I ask for a show of hands of those using QuickFIX. Invariably, about three quarters of the audience will raise their hands. The contribution to the industry by Jim Downs, Oren Miller, and Dan Goodwin, the project sponsor, cannot be understated. It was a critical success factor for the FIX standard and it is one of the most successful open source projects ever.”
Jim Downs adds: “For myself and Connamara, having the opportunity to be a part of the QuickFIX team opened our eyes to the power of the open source movement. As a result, Connamara is either a maintainer or contributor to several open source projects. We actively seek opportunities to release new open source projects and contribute to existing projects.”
