Each year, over 700,000 students participate in The Stock Market Game™, a program from the SIFMA Foundation that teaches real-world financial skills through online simulation. But as demand constantly grows, the organization’s existing infrastructure became a barrier to scaling. To continue expanding its reach, the no-profit chose Payara Services’ platform engineering expertise to deliver a modern, reliable runtime.
A sound financial education helps individuals to take control of their monetary wellbeing. They are empowered to overcome challenges and effectively plan for their future and stability. Thanks to digital technologies, access to financial literacy tools has never been easier. An example of a highly successful program is the SIFMA Foundation, a not-for-profit part of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) organization, which works with financial industries to settle regulations and policies.
The SIFMA Foundation is dedicated to fostering knowledge and understanding of the financial markets for individuals of all backgrounds. It drives financial inclusion by helping strengthen economic opportunity across communities and increase individuals’ awareness of and access to the benefits of the global marketplace.
Through programs like the organization’s flagship application The Stock Market Game™, an online simulation of the global capital markets that engages students grades 4-12, the SIFMA Foundation provides valuable financial literacy tools. These are designed to help equip students with the knowledge and skills to understand financial systems and participate in the global economy. Backed by the broader financial industry, the organization delivers these programs to classrooms across the United States and beyond, promoting financial inclusion, critical thinking and real-world learning. Currently, more than 700,000 students take part in the game annually, across all classroom and virtual learning environments.
Overcoming Bottlenecks to Reach a Broader Audience
To support its educational mission at scale, the SIFMA Foundation and The Stock Market Game depend on a robust technology platform that uses two IBM Advanced Interactive eXecutive (AIX) machines. Over the years, this has grown considerably and its existing infrastructure, built in C and C++ and reliant on legacy, proprietary C-written middleware technology, became a major barrier to expanding the game user base and, in turn, the organization’s outreach objective.
Reid Watson, Senior Associate, Software Developer at SIFMA Foundation, explains: “Before working with Payara, we relied on a system that was a little outdated and it was unsupported proprietary middleware that eventually made our entire system obsolete. This limited our ability to scale and limited our ability to modernize our operations with the latest and greatest technology available.”
More precisely, student participation in the SIFMA Foundation project increased so much that as many as 8,000 students could be online simultaneously during peak activity. The existing system could reliably handle only approximately 4,000 users, i.e. 1,000–2,000 per machine, though.
Furthermore, the organization felt the need to move away from the existing design and open up the product for expansion and modernization. Specifically, the team knew a modern, Java-based architecture was necessary, but finding the right Java runtime to integrate with the existing AIX environment posed another challenge.
Transitioning to a New, Up-to-Date Setup
SIFMA Foundation turned to Payara Services and its Payara Platform Enterprise suite of runtime technologies to help the application modernization efforts. One of the core technologies within the Payara Platform Enterprise portfolio is Payara Server Enterprise, a fully supported, production-ready Java application server built for mission-critical environments. The runtime’s out-of-the-box compatibility and reliability, combined with responsive support and predictable updates, made it a robust and future-proof choice for the digital transformation of SIFMA Foundation and its educational videogame.
Willard Kramer, Senior Associate, SMG System Program at SIFMA Foundation, has been working at for the organization for approximately 20 years and has been with the project since its inception. He comments: “One of the things that is most interesting thing about our system is that it’s an AIX system – currently on AIX version 7.2, but we started on version 6. Anyone working with AIX understands that it’s pretty difficult sometimes to get things working, so we were very pleased to find that Payara worked out of a box in our AIX machine and allowed us to just move from a very old technology to something that was more modern and it was easy to do because it just fit into the AIX.”
While no major roadblocks emerged during the modernization and migration project, there were important considerations around Java compatibility. One challenge arose when a silent AIX upgrade led to a Java compatibility issue. However, Payara’s responsive support team quickly diagnosed the problem and recommended a fix, ensuring minimal downtime.
Modernizing also meant rethinking the application’s structure. The move to Java required rearchitecting parts of the application to adopt modern object-oriented structures, such as JavaBeans. This extra development effort laid the foundation for a more modular and maintainable system. With standardized Java installations and a consistent development framework in place, the team gained better control over updates, enhancements, and future scalability.
“It’s extra work sometimes to take your flat programs and change them into object-oriented beans,” Kramer says. “But what you get out of doing all this is a project that is easier to manage. (…) Yes, you are going to spend a lot of time moving from your older environment but it’s going to be well worth it because once you modernize and put everything into standard structures, handling modifications, enhancements and other tasks becomes much easier.”
Proven Modernization Results
“Payara enabled us to do two things: first off, it allowed us to scale our operations, and it also allowed us to modernize our systems with Java-based configuration that provided a really reliable and customizable solution. More than anything, the biggest impact has been our ability to scale our operations and grow our user base. In fact, with Payara we have been able to increase the number of users that we serve.”
Reid Watson, Senior Associate, Software Developer at SIFMA Foundation
Once the migration was complete, the results were transformational. The new system could benefit from a considerable boost improvement in performance. Willard Kramer comments: “I have to say our performance increased, so we went from a shop that could handle maybe 1,000-2,000 users per machine to a shop that could handle 4,000-5,000 users per machine. We became more efficient naturally, by just moving into this platform.”
Reid Watson adds: “Payara enabled us to do two things: first off, it allowed us to scale our operations, and it also allowed us to modernize our systems with Java-based configuration that provided a really reliable and customizable solution. More than anything, the biggest impact has been our ability to scale our operations and grow our user base. In fact, with Payara we have been able to increase the number of users that we serve.”
Even more, the development process also became more agile, as the system is no longer static. This means that the software development team at SIFMA Foundation can change the code when needed to improve the application’s capabilities. Even more, the developers can do so with an intuitive platform.
Reid Watson explains: “Updates, patches and improvements are now easily managed with Payara (Platform) Enterprise solution, and the product support team has been both timely and incredibly helpful whenever needed. We’ve benefitted greatly from ease of use. Payara is relatively straightforward to learn and allows us to build applications very quickly.”
Looking Ahead: Built for Growth
With the successful migration complete and the system running smoothly, the SIFMA Foundation is now looking to the future. The current setup includes two AIX machines, but the organization is planning to scale up as demand continues to rise. For Kramer, the philosophy is clear: if a system works and meets the mission, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. But modernizing with the right technology partner is what enables that stability.
He says: “I’m a firm believer of using things that you have that work and not redesigning unless you have to. So, our use of Payara will continue to increase. Number of users has increased over the years from 4,000 to 8,000. The goal of our program is to continue to grow and service more students.
“Our intention is to continue using Payara. Right now, we have two AIX machines (…) and we may go to a third, but Payara gives you this flexibility so that you can do that. (…) For us, Payara worked out-of-a-box, it allowed us to transition from C to Java and it continues to allow us to improve our product and go forward.”
Fabio Turizo, Service Team Manager at Payara Services, comments: “We’re proud to support the SIFMA Foundation and its mission to advance financial literacy. By enabling the modernization and scalability of The Stock Market Game, Payara Platform Enterprise is helping reach hundreds of thousands of students with vital financial education. It’s incredibly rewarding to see our technology play a direct role in empowering the next generation with the tools to succeed in tomorrow’s economy.”
To watch the full interview, visit: https://www.crowdcast.io/c/virtual-payara-conferece-dec-2024-strategic-insight/sPMTF
