Apache Camel is an open source integration platform.
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Fiserv Wealth Management Network
Score 8.0 out of 10
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The Wealth Management Network from Fiserv is an expansive networks of managed account data and connectivity. It brings together asset managers and sponsors to perform all necessary business functions to support the industry. The Network includes messaging services, information exchange, and managed account data services.
Message brokering across different systems, with transactionality and the ability to have fine tuned control over what happens using Java (or other languages), instead of a heavy, proprietary languages. One situation that it doesn't fit very well (as far as I have experienced) is when your workflow requires significant data mapping. While possible when using Java tooling, some other visual data mapping tools in other integration frameworks are easier to work with.
Fiserv Wealth Management Network is well suited in scenarios where an organization has multiple financial services providers and would like the benefit of tying that all together and managing it from a single, unified solution. The benefit there is increased efficiency and productivity, especially when compared to the manual alternative of having managers log in to separate sponsor platforms.
Camel has an easy learning curve. It is fairly well documented and there are about 5-6 books on Camel.
There is a large user group and blogs devoted to all things Camel and the developers of Camel provide quick answers and have also been very quick to patch Camel, when bugs are reported.
Camel integrates well with well known frameworks like Spring, and other middleware products like Apache Karaf and Servicemix.
There are over 150 components for the Camel framework that help integrate with diverse software platforms.
Cost ... it's definitely not the cheapest option out there. the way pricing is itemized and a separate upcharge for each add-on gets annoying. They can probably bundle things a little better and offer a discount on the bundled products
the volume of system updates and changes is nauseating at times and we have to prepare and test accordingly every time there is a scheduled update. that takes up a lot of resources; quarterly updates to products would be much easier.
more responsive support and ideally more stable support engineers ... it seems like turnover is high in their support roles and that impacts customer success and MTTR.
If you are looking for a Java-based open source low cost equivalent to webMethods or Azure Logic Apps, Apache Camel is an excellent choice as it is mature and widely deployed, and included in many vendored Java application servers too such as Redhat JBoss EAP. Apache Camel is lacking on the GUI tooling side compared to commercial products such as webMethods or Azure Logic Apps.
Very fast time to market in that so many components are available to use immediately.
Error handling mechanisms and patterns of practice are robust and easy to use which in turn has made our application more robust from the start, so fewer bugs.
However, testing and debugging routes is more challenging than working is standard Java so that takes more time (less time than writing the components from scratch).
Most people don't know Camel coming in and many junior developers find it overwhelming and are not enthusiastic to learn it. So finding people that want to develop/maintain it is a challenge.
Speed of service is greatly improved across partners. I believe our MTTR for service requests has improved by 30-40%
Standardized platform for our staff which translates to better retention and a lower training effort.
Cost is the negative impact ... it goes without saying that using Fiserv is much more expensive to the manual alternative which is very human resource intensive but low cost. But that's to be expected ...we're just trading time for money.
