Chapter 14. Web Integration

I have been quoted saying that, in the future, all companies will be Internet companies. I still believe that. More

than ever, really.

— Andrew Grove

The Internet, or the Web, has evolved from some separate world into something that is

everywhere and in everything. It has become a technology platform enabling a multitude

of different use cases. From a finance perspective, the following seem particularly

noteworthy:

Data provision/gathering

Web technology allows the provision of data and the gathering thereof in a simplified

manner and generally at reduced costs; it also speeds up in general all associated

processes. Large financial data providers, like Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters, rely

heavily on the Web and related technologies to provide the financial world with data

in real time.

Trading/buying/selling

Using the Web also facilitates trading of financial securities; even private investors

today have access to professional trading facilities (e.g., online brokers like

Interactive Brokers) and can trade securities in real time.

Application providing

Models like Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) allow both small companies, like startups,

and large ones to provide applications in an efficient manner; even the smallest outfit

can today reach a global target audience at very little cost. Large corporations benefit

from web technologies, for example, when they use them to provide internal

applications that are accessible and usable via any standard web browser, instead of

installing such applications on hundreds or even thousands of different machines.

Communication

Of course, the Web facilitates communication within organizations and across

organizations; the majority of today’s business and financial communication has

moved from paper to the Web.

Commoditization/scalability

Recent web technologies also allow for better virtualization, making web servers and

servers in general a commodity that everybody can rent at rather low variable costs

and that is easily scalable when requirements change; computing power and storage

capacity become more and more comparable to electricity, which we are all used to

getting from the plug sockets at home.

Again, Python for the Web is a broad topic in itself that cannot be covered by a single

chapter in this book. However, this chapter is able to cover a number of important topics

from a finance perspective. In particular, it covers:

Web protocols