Client:

optionsXpress.com

Client Profile:

optionsXpress Holdings, Inc., is a pioneer in equity options and futures trading, offers an innovative suite of online brokerage services for investor education, strategy evaluation and trade execution.
Barron’s named optionsXpress the number one online broker for four years in a row (2003 to 2006) and Kiplinger's Personal Finance named it the top discount broker in 2006.

Challenges:

• mimic rich functionality of Google and Yahoo charts without using Flash.
• provide high-traffic solution that scales up to 6+ million users.

In December 2006 Diagramics had won a project announced by the famous online broker, OptionsXpress.com.

A number of companies were competing for the project, including well-know in financial industry names such as Dundas, EasyChart, ChartFx, Xceed.

OptionsXpress wanted to re-design its financial charting solution (developed by Prophet.net) and make new charts somewhat similar to interactive financial charts introduced by Google and Yahoo

The challenge was to mimic rich functionality of Google and Yahoo charts without using Flash, but only with JavaScript.

Moreover, OptionsXpress was not only interested in the advanced charting solution but also in an ongoing support and custom software development.
The later, ongoing software customization, was a critical issue for OptionsXpress, and many competing companies could only propose monolithic products with no or little customization.

Being a small group of top-developers (majority of the team are ex-Microsoft employees), who's ready to perform custom work of any complexity, Diagramics had a strong competitive advantage and won the competition.

Result:

In May 2007, after 2 months of development and 3 month of Beta testing, Diagramics charting solution for OptionsXpress went live for more than 6 million OptionsXpress users.

Transition from old charting solution, developed by Prophet.net, to Diagramics charts went smoothly and painless, OptionsXpress did not report any issues related to this process.

Diagramics high-traffic financial charts on the optionsXpress.com web site.