SoftDomain
Proof in production

Case studies & portfolio

Systems are judged in production, not in demonstration. Here is where our engineering has been proven — from derivatives clearing to cloud migration continuity.

Case study 01

Derivatives clearing and low-latency pricing

Citi · Derivatives Clearing Trading Systems

Business Context
A clearing platform processing prime-broker and intermediated credit and rates trades for the institution's global client base, with distributed development across Jersey City and Shanghai.
Challenge
Rising trade volumes, new Dodd-Frank regulatory obligations, latency in the pricing path, and a trader front end and mobile access that needed rebuilding.
Scope
Our specialists led development across the clearing platform: trade rules, pricing, connectivity, regulatory enhancements, front end and mobile interfaces.
Solution Delivered
A pricing server rebuilt on Linux UDP in place of a message-bus transport; a C++ QuickFIX gateway for credit-hub connectivity; Groovy trade-rule templates parsing venue XML from CME, ICE, LCH, MarkitWire and JSCC; and the trader front end rewritten in C#/.NET.

Technologies

Java · Spring · PL/SQL and Oracle packages · C++ · C#/.NET · Groovy · Web Services · GemFire cache · Tibco Rendezvous · IBM MQ · FIX/QuickFIX · Linux · JavaScript, HTML5, jQuery, WebSocket

Results

18 ms round-trip request/response on the rebuilt pricing path. Regulatory capability extended for Dodd-Frank. Mobile access delivered for Android and iOS.

Pillars

  • 01 Financial Solutions
  • 03 Scalability & Optimization
  • 05 Databases & Event Streaming
Case study 02

Federated sign-on, moving to containers

Verizon · Identity and Platform Engineering

Business Context
A national carrier running a large estate of customer-facing and internal applications, each historically carrying its own login, credential store and session handling.
Challenge
Fragmented authentication left users holding separate credentials per application, session policy varying by team, and every new service repeating the same identity work before it could launch.
Scope
Design and rollout of a federated identity layer shared across applications, followed by an ongoing programme to move workloads off static hosts and onto container infrastructure.
Solution Delivered
Single sign-on implemented using OpenID Connect, with OAuth 2.0 authorization flows: a central authorization server, token-based sessions, and standard scopes and claims issued per application. Migration to container images deployed under Kubernetes orchestration, cutting over service by service.

Technologies

OAuth 2.0 · OpenID Connect · JWT · Identity provider integration · Docker · Kubernetes · CI/CD pipelines

Results

One credential set across participating applications · Identity work lifted out of each new service · Container migration, staged per service

Pillars

  • 02 Enterprise Custom Solutions
  • 03 Scalability & Optimization
  • 06 Container Platforms
Case study 03

Core financial application, 40% faster

Thomson Reuters Financials · Performance engineering

Business Context
Thomson Reuters Financials (now part of LSEG) operated a core financial application in St. Louis, Missouri, processing real-time financial events at high volume across distributed systems.
Challenge
Processing bottlenecks in the database layer and event pipeline constrained throughput under peak load, limiting headroom for growth and leaving failover behavior untested.
Scope
End-to-end diagnosis and optimization of the application: PostgreSQL performance engineering alongside Kafka event-stream tuning, designed for horizontal scalability and always-on availability.
Solution Delivered
Execution-plan analysis, query and index tuning, transaction optimization, trigger-based processing, replication and distributed data-management patterns; Kafka tuned across producers, topics, partitions, consumers, retries and event sequencing. Approximately 40% performance improvement delivered.

Technologies

PostgreSQL · Execution-plan analysis · Query and index tuning · Replication · Apache Kafka · Partitioning and consumer groups · Distributed data management

Results

~40% performance improvement on the core financial application · Bottlenecks reduced under peak load · Failover readiness and resilience improved

Pillars

  • 01 Financial Solutions
  • 03 Scalability & Optimization
  • 05 Databases & Event Streaming
Case study 04

Fraud detection redesigned for millisecond decisioning

ACI Worldwide · Fraud Detection and Reporting

Business Context
A fraud detection and reporting platform serving a growing client base, where detection quality and response time both directly affect the operator's commercial position.
Challenge
The platform needed to absorb a growing number of users and cut request/response timing to a few milliseconds, while making the interface extensible enough to answer client-specific requirements without rework.
Scope
Our team led the redesign across both the detection core and the operator-facing interface.
Solution Delivered
The system was separated into a C++ core carrying the rule engine for fraud detection, and a Java interface layer with an extensible HTML5 front end — allowing rules and presentation to evolve independently.

Technologies

C++ rule engine · Java 8 · HTML5, JavaScript, ExtJS · Apache Tomcat · Oracle 11 · ActiveMQ · Hazelcast cache · Solaris 11 (core) · Linux (interface)

Design Target

Architecture targeted at millisecond request/response with an extensible client-facing interface.

Pillars

  • 01 Financial Solutions
  • 02 Enterprise Custom Solutions
  • 03 Scalability & Optimization
Case study 05

Protecting continuity through a cloud transition

Capital One · Cloud migration continuity

Business Context
A financial services organization migrating enterprise applications to AWS while continuing to receive very large volumes of inbound files into its existing data centres every day.
Challenge
Applications had moved to the cloud, but thousands of files continued to arrive daily at on-premises locations. Until the file pipeline followed, migrated applications could not reliably find the data they depended on.
Scope
Our specialists supported the AWS migration and engineered the interim bridge that preserved operational continuity during the transition.
Solution Delivered
A solution using advanced Linux facilities to automatically detect the thousands of files transferred daily into the company data centres and immediately copy them to the specific locations expected by the migrated AWS applications.

Technologies

AWS · Linux (kernel-level file event facilities) · Automated file transfer and routing · Shell and systems programming

Results

Business continuity preserved through a complex cloud transition, with no dependency on re-engineering upstream file producers.

Pillars

  • 01 Financial Solutions
  • 02 Enterprise Custom Solutions
  • 06 Container Platforms
Portfolio · Banking and capital markets

Banking and capital markets

Hadoop to Google Cloud

JPMorgan Chase · Banking · Consultancy

Challenge —
Global client-data processing needed modernization.
Solution —
Migration of data processing from Hadoop to Google Cloud Platform.
Result —
Global processing modernized.

Fixed-income trading

UBS · Capital markets · Consultancy

Challenge —
Market-data feed cost and processing bottlenecks.
Solution —
ECN/FIX-to-ION gateway and a reusable pricing framework.
Result —
Performance gain; feed cost cut.

Real-time trade notification

Bear Stearns · Brokerage · Prior team

Challenge —
Customers needed live visibility of trade activity.
Solution —
Asynchronous notification to customer desktops over IBM MQ and Sybase Open Server.
Result —
Live asynchronous customer notification.

Trading system connectivity

IMS · Trading firm · Direct

Challenge —
FIX connectivity and market-data feeds needed to be client-extensible.
Solution —
Extensible FIX framework with UDP multicast market-data handling on Solaris.
Result —
Client-extensible FIX messaging; defects resolved.
Portfolio · Enterprise systems at scale

Enterprise systems at scale

Store consolidation

CVS Pharmacy · Retail · Partnership

Challenge —
Fragmented store backends across locations.
Solution —
One deployable, web-managed package for all stores.
Result —
Simplified deployment.

UNIX engineering

AT&T Bell Laboratories · Telecom R&D · Prior team

Challenge —
OS install, I/O and multiprocessor work.
Solution —
Kernel, driver, X Window and networking engineering.
Result —
Used in major UNIX releases.

Billing optimization

BMG · Media · Direct

Challenge —
Billing cycle taking two weeks to complete.
Solution —
Stored-procedure rework and multithreaded processing.
Result —
Two weeks reduced to one day.

Message throughput

NDCHealth · Healthcare · Direct

Challenge —
Processing throughput ceiling in the messaging tier.
Solution —
Multithreading and messaging redesign over UNIX IPC and IBM MQ.
Result —
500% throughput gain.
Portfolio · Financial media, data and products

Financial media, data and platform products

Publishing analytics for traders

Bloomberg · Financial data & fintech · Consultancy

Challenge —
Real-time readership analytics needed during a global platform migration.
Solution —
Readership heat prediction to terminals in C, C++, Java, Oracle PL/SQL and Verity K2.
Result —
Real-time analytics with no service interruption.

Wealth and financial publishing

Dow Jones · Financial media · Consultancy

Challenge —
Advisor tooling and publishing channels spread across ageing platforms.
Solution —
Advisor wealth tooling, WSJ.com enhancements and news-channel queuing on J2EE, Spring and Oracle.
Result —
Platform modernization; Solaris-to-Linux port.

Financial platform migration

Fairstone Financial · Consumer finance · Consultancy

Challenge —
Financial applications tied to on-premise infrastructure.
Solution —
Migration of financial applications to AWS public cloud.
Result —
Scalable cloud foundation.

Learning ecosystem

SoftDomain · Education · Direct

Challenge —
Institutions ran separate systems for content, delivery and assessment.
Solution —
Owned multi-platform learning ecosystem, architecture through delivery.
Result —
Full-lifecycle capability.
Sector experience

Industries served

01

Banking & financial services

JPMorgan · Capital One · Fairstone · Wells Fargo

02

Capital markets

Citi · UBS · Bear Stearns · IMS

03

Financial data & fintech

Bloomberg · Thomson Reuters · ACI Worldwide

04

Telecommunications

Verizon · AT&T · Alcatel-Lucent

05

Healthcare

Blue Cross Blue Shield · Aetna · NDCHealth

06

Publishing & media

Dow Jones · BMG · International Herald Tribune

07

Retail & logistics

CVS Pharmacy · FedEx

08

Education

SoftDomain Learning Ecosystem

09

Enterprise technology

Sun Microsystems · SCO · Netscape · IBM

Organizations we have engineered for

JPMorgan Chase
Citi
Wells Fargo
Capital One
UBS
Bear Stearns
Bloomberg
Thomson Reuters
Dow Jones
ACI Worldwide
Fairstone
IMS
IBM
Sun Microsystems
Netscape
SCO
Verizon
AT&T
Alcatel-Lucent
Aetna
CVS Pharmacy
NDCHealth
FedEx
BMG

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