Data Agnostic

This is a good quote from Chuck Helveston at Archer, over in the investment management business: “Until the SMA [separately managed account] industry universally adopts standards for a common global language, any system supporting SMAs will need to be data agnostic.”

This is sound advice for buyers of systems. But it's also kind of sad for vendors. To be data agnostic, you have to “believe in” every proprietary data standard in your industry and be able to translate between them. This adds development and maintenance overhead to systems. So it's bad for buyers of systems as well, who end up paying higher prices. By delaying agreement on industry standards, everybody suffers.  ARCHER