1. IFX Forum Overview
September 28, 2015
© Copyright IFX Forum, Inc. 2015

2. Overview Mission and Governance Operations Membership
Liaison Activities
Technical Framework of the specification
My goal is simply to provide enough background to inform a meaningful dialog that I hope will continue after today.
© Copyright IFX Forum, Inc. 2015
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3. Mission of the IFX Forum
Organized in 1998, the mission of the IFX Forum is to develop and promote adoption of an open, interoperable standard for electronic financial data exchange.
The IFX standard is designed to meet the business requirements of the global financial services industry in the areas it addresses.
Our mission is to build a standard to satisfy business requirements for the global financial services industry

4. IFX Governance Manages IFX Forum, Inc. IFX Board of Directors
Appoints Steering Committee Members
IFX Steering Committee
Manages IFX business day-to-day
IFX Architecture Committee
Manages the IFX Specification
IFX Working Groups
Develops specification content
The IFX Forum has an established governance model as depicted here.
Note that the IFX Forum Steering Committee must approve the charter of a work group and the Architecture Committee approves the content. Gaining Steering’s approval of the charter simply ensures that we coordinate work effectively for member benefit.
Work Groups develop all of the content including:
New Objects
New Messages
New Service Definitions
Enhancements and corrections
Documentation
In order to be effective on those fronts, the Forum does not limit the # participants in a Work Group. In fact, we have found that more participation usually means that more perspective is brought into the mix and that improves the end product. That additional perspective comes from the mix of companies and mix of business and technical experts involved in the work.

5. How we operate Member volunteers do all of the work*
Regular WG meetings
Teleconferencing
Members-only web site
Member Companies have unlimited participation
Monthly Steering Committee meetings
Approximately annual releases of specification
One company, one vote – applies to work groups and governance
*Virtual Management, Inc. handles our PR and general administration

6. IFX Liaison and Interoperability
Standards Development Organizations
Payment Network Operators and Rules Governance

7. The IFX Standard and Framework
The IFX Standard is also a framework for designing SOA solutions to meet your business requirements.
The IFX standard is:
A Message Specification
Driven by business requirements
Technology-neutral
The product of 100+ man-years of expert contributions
Globally supported
The IFX Standard is also a Framework
A powerful, scalable development framework
Built upon SOA design principles
Easily adapted to meet your needs
It is important for those of you considering IFX-based solutions to understand that the IFX Standard is both a message specification and a design framework. Of necessity, it is also incorporates careful consideration of the data necessary to create successful implementations.
Another thing important to understand is that the IFX Standard is a Business Message Specification. It is driven by business scenarios and, although often implemented with XML technology, is actually technology-neutral.
Again, the focus in this presentation is to help you understand how the IFX framework can be leveraged to meet your needs and jump start your SOA development efforts!
© Copyright IFX Forum, Inc. 2014
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8. Service Providers offer Services to Clients.
IFX Service Framework
The fundamental underlying principle of the IFX Framework is this simple:
Service Providers offer Services to Clients.
The standard is specifically designed to support stateless, multi-tiered communications between clients and servers
The fundamental underlying principle of the IFX Framework is this simple: Service Providers offer Services to Clients.
How such services are delivered is dependent on your business practices, technology capabilities and myriad other factors. Deployment models also vary from one provider to the next.
Up to this point we have not really discussed where data resides, nor have we discussed any particular transaction or streaming models. The IFX Standard is neutral on these points.
The diagrams up to this point would seem to imply that services are delivered from a single platform with data stored in one place.
But notice that because the standard is based on SOA principles and assumed to be implemented on stateless, multi-tiered infrastructures that it is quite possible to expose services to clients in such a way that your dependence on other services and other service providers is invisible to the client. As expected, then, services may, in turn, be clients of other services.
© Copyright IFX Forum, Inc. 2014
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9. Summary
Participating in IFX Forum is all about collaboration with industry experts – add value, take value – share and share alike.
The IFX Standard is about meeting business requirements in a way that can be practically enabled with SOA technology and design.
The IFX Standard can/should be viewed as a Framework as well as a message specification.
IFX Forum is a stable, industry leading, member driven Standards Development Organization with broad domestic and international support.
You now have a better understanding that the IFX Business Message Specification is more than a data and message specification – it provides a solid and extensible framework for the development and deployment of SOA solutions; a framework that can be easily adapted to your needs…
…and a framework that provides you the benefit of the knowledge contributed by business and technology experts in the financial services arena since 1998!
© Copyright IFX Forum, Inc. 2014
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10. Additional Resources
There is much more to be learned using the resources shown below.
Direct Inquiries To
Organization
Name
IFX Forum
Judith Vanderkay, Director, Public Relations
IFX Community Forum
Available to Guests, Subscribers and Members
Reference Documents
Topic
Type of Document
Reference to Document
IFX Standards
IFX Standard Online
IFX SOA Implementation Guide
Complete guide available to members and subscribers
Sample content freely available
Thank you for your attention, your interest and your support of the IFX Standard.
More information can be found at these locations and at
© Copyright IFX Forum, Inc. 2014