Meet Our Customer: Nutcracker

A short interview with Dean Casey, Owner and Director at Nutcracker, a specialist in real-time financial data and information solutions.

Let’s talk about your organization. What is your core business?
“Nutcracker is a technology specialist for companies in the financial services sector that require real-time access to financial markets and supporting information, functions and processes. Nutcracker’s service oriented architecture connects to an increasing number of markets and instruments for data feeds and trading and facilitates processing and viewing this data in a transparent and effective way”.

I will definitely use Lightstreamer again for other similar projects, if a streaming engine is required!

Dean Casey

— Owner and Director at Nutcracker

Could you let us know any further information?
“Our product portfolio is made up of a number of different solutions including
Web Portal Solutions – Nutcracker’s Web Portal Solution allows our customers to offer white-labelled, tailor-made trading and portfolio viewing websites for their retail clients. Features include live market data, stock info and watch list, order routing and technical analysis among the many others.
JTrader – A tiny yet complete trading application, developed as a Java Applet and working on a wide variety of platforms, that provide a full watch list and order routing facilities.
Web TraderPro – A high performance web based professional trading application for professional traders on the road and day traders. It is available for the Internet on desktops, tablets and smart phones and is supported by all browsers.
PortfolioPro – Available in two editions (for Portfolio Managers and Administrators), it provides detailed and summary views of client holdings and transaction data all in one easy to navigate screen. Advanced Modelling, Performance, Compliance, Management Fees, Statements and Reporting are some of the many features available in PortfolioPro”.

Who is the typical user of your product or service?
“Professional traders, day traders, online retail clients and portfolio managers who need quick access to a multitude of markets and instruments and cross-market reporting of relevant information in single screens. Institutional and retail clients who are looking for transparent access to their portfolios and increasingly want trading functionality put in their own hands”.

Could you please give us more details on your Lightstreamer-powered project you recently completed for PSG Online?
“We provide all the back-end trading engines and links to multiple stock markets for PSG Online. Using Lightstreamer, we provided their web developers with a data streaming feed for their web portal. This allowed them to upgrade their website from “point and click” to real-time data”.

Is your main application based on HTML or other front-end technologies?
“We have multiple applications to provide a range of functionality for a cross section of end users. The range is from professional traders and portfolio managers, day traders, internal back office and compliance staff and online retail clients. The application technologies therefore range from applications (mainly using .Net WinForms to Java applets) to HTML”.

Do you provide any native apps for smartphones and tablets?
“No, but we developed HTML portals with custom CSS to optimise the content for various devices”.

Do you use Lightstreamer for bi-directional data push (that is, also for sending messages from the client to the server)?
“Not yet, but we are considering to implement Lightstreamer for order routing in the future”.

What other features of Lightstreamer are you taking benefit from (e.g. data throttling, low latency, security, smart proxy traversal, etc.)?
“We still not tried all the features of Lightstreamer, but I understand that many of them are included by default (throttling etc). The quick connectivity and ability to operate on almost any web accessible device is a major feature for us and very important”.

Are you considering Lightstreamer for additional projects in the next future?
“I will definitely use Lightstreamer again for other similar projects, if a streaming engine is required”.

Why has Nutcracker chosen Lightstreamer among many other products, both commercial and free?
“Lightstreamer supports a wide range of devices very well. Every device and location I tested from worked fine from the beginning. I did consider a few others but Lightstreamer stood head and shoulders above them all”.

Any comments on your experience integrating Lightstreamer?
“I am happy with Lightstreamer and the service from its support team. Both have been very helpful in getting our project operational. The client side API updates are brilliant. It made it easy for me to train our clients’ dev team and get them up and running”.

For more information on Nutcracker, please visit www.nutcracker.co.za.