Scotiabank puts code on Github

Scotiabank puts code on Github

Canada's Scotiabank is embracing the open source developer community, posting the first of what should be many software releases to Github.

As first reported by IT World Canada, the open source effort is being driven by Scotiabank's Platform Organisation (Plato) unit, a product development platform.

Plato has shared Initializer, a module which is part of a larger tool, called Accelerator Pipeline, which brings together code and other resources for software development. More libraries and APIs will follow.

Justin Arbuckle, SVP, Plato, Scotiabank, tells IT World that connecting a bank which is nearly 200 years old with a host of new technology is a "tough engineering problem". The Github dump is designed "to attract the best developers in the world" to help solve it.

The move is a first for a Canadian bank, although Deutsche Bank recently put code that helps firms gather information about their IT estate from multiple sources on Github.

Comments: (3)

A Finextra member
A Finextra member 17 August, 2018, 14:43Be the first to give this comment the thumbs up 0 likes

A good initiative by Scotiabank.

Separately, I do wonder how many banks - or indeed fintechs - might already find some of 'their' code on Github, courtesy of either developers on the payroll or contractors.

H Wobbe
H Wobbe - DataFix - Toronto 17 August, 2018, 14:51Be the first to give this comment the thumbs up 0 likes

An interesting development indeed.  Quite innovative for a Canadian bank, especially given their dependance on "legacy" systems.

Ketharaman Swaminathan
Ketharaman Swaminathan - GTM360 Marketing Solutions - Pune 17 August, 2018, 17:31Be the first to give this comment the thumbs up 0 likes

In his book Flash Boys, Michael Lewis gives an example of an American investment bank that downloaded open source code related to algo trading, modified it inhouse, but didn't submit the modified code back to the open source foundation. Would be interesting to know if the code uploaded by Scotia Bank to GitHub is developed from scratch by Scotia Bank or is of the nature of modified code mentioned in Flash Boys.

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