I think we're in the middle of a bit of a transition phase within the industry. > Every single one of our customers is looking for a path back to something tha

I think we're in the middle of a bit of a transition phase within the industry. > Every single one of our customers is looking for a path back to something that looks like the mainframe in terms of vertical integration of the business stack. I think this is always going to be true as a desire, but it's also true that it's likely an impossible state to achieve completely. There will always be consolidation efforts, but with the rate of M&A and growth of new markets and alternative products, I don't think anyone can afford only consolidation as a strategy today. So in the end, it's a losing battle to try and avoid system sprawl at the moment. > The only financial services companies that are seeing positive uplift from these sorts of initiatives are those with enough resources to try this path My view has been the exact opposite, only the resource heavy FS companies are the ones who can afford to pursue consolidation! > Many of our clients are stuck in some contorted stance with half their stack in AS400-land and the other half scattered to the various "cloud" services which are mostly just random websites/services with shitty SOAP APIs (or no APIs at all). My take, and what I think this article is poorly commenting on, is that everyone is betting on and trying to pursue open banking. Rather than move internal systems into a more simplified format, pushing the market to use common standards and unify behavior across the industry. We're in a phase that is not quite there yet, but bits and pieces are starting to move, so it's very messy. And that's why it seems that strategies for vertical integration and open-source both can coexist in the zeitgeist today. Caveat, I do work on tech innovation from a regulator and FMI side, so I'm certainly missing the nitty gritty of your perspective.