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@TapanAgarwal:

You've hit the the nail on the head. The excellent spec'cing of electronic components is what I meant by catalog.

That said, I'd be remiss if I failed to mention the drive towards software cataloging by GITHUB et al. Despite such initiatives, Open Source movement presents another source of difference between software and other industries. I pay $X for 12μF capacitor, plug it into my PCB circuit, and forget about it. OTOH, even if I totally trust a software component on GITHUB and use it in my system, OSF terms may preclude public acknowledgment of such assembly process of developing a software system. While the open source component itself is free of license, OSF imposes conditions of redistribution of modified code back in the open source community. Redistribution of modified code is not always easy. There could be IP issues involved. After reading Flash Boys, I've learned that there could even be outright stealing involved. In this book about algo trading Michael Lewis references a top tier investment bank that brazenly uses open source code in its proprietary software and doesn't contribute anything back to the open source community. While it's a major violation of OSF rules, life goes on. If a company is unwilling / unable to conform to OSF rules, it could very well be assembling software systems from open source components without announcing it publicly.

As a result, it's quite likely that, whatever little reuse of components is happening in software systems, we may never know all about it.

@ErikBogaerts:

A capacitor in a PCB is a commodity. Unlike software, which is positioned by IT vendors, and accepted by customers, as providing competitive advantage to their owner. Even if s/he wants to, a PCB designer can't design a capacitor from ground up. Unlike software system designers who can theoretically - if not also practically - build most components from scratch and, more importantly, refuse to accept code written by others on faith. I used "emotional attachment" as a catch-all phrase to describe these characteristics of software systems. Protectionism is an equally valid expression.

Because suppliers position enterprise software as providing competitive advantage, most owners of enterprise systems think of them as trade secret. As a result, it's impractical to expect any transparency and openness in this realm. Therefore, I'm not sure when and if such a catalog / marketplace will become a reality in enterprise software building blocks. Ergo, it might forever be an aspiration to build a software system by assembling components from a reusable library.

At least they can't blame the pet whipping boy, legacy systems, for this cock up!

You forgot one more premise of the digital business model: "fail fast":)

Nice post. Ever since I entered the software industry over two decades ago, I've been hearing some version or the other of your statement "building a system is now more about assembling services rather than building things from scratch." Then and now, this statement is valid if you replace system with a car or a PCB. But, it's still aspirational for software systems, notwithstanding a slew of enabling technologies like CBSA, SOA, MicroServices, etc., that have come and gone in the meanwhile. There could be several reasons for this state of affairs but I've always noticed one thing: Nobody recognizes the real elephant in the room, namely, the maker's emotional attachment for their work product, whether you call it component or API or microservice or whatever.

I believe we'll see real progress on your statement turning into reality for software systems only when the emotional factor is taken out of the picture and replaced by a catalog of software building blocks and a marketplace where they can be purchased with a credit card, the way it happens in automobile, electronics and other industries where your statement is valid.

Keen on knowing if you know of any such catalog and marketplace for software building blocks?

Wut? I thought IT companies license technology to banks!

Why is there no mention in this article of engaging with your bank via social media? I wrote about it five years ago: Gain Social Media And Lose The Call Center Hold Music. Since then, virtually all my service providers support social media and I increasingly use Twitter as my first port of call to engage with all my banks. Notwithstanding the security/privacy requirements in financial matters, social media works for almost 75% of my engagement needs with my banks. Some of my recent social media missives with my banks include: (1) Why is your ATM always out of cash? (2) I haven't received my credit card statement. Please send it ASAP. Often, by the time I'd have logged into my Internet Banking account and located the chat button, I've already got my issue resolved via social media.

@MilosDunjic: The link is from a service that highlights the portion of a webpage that's relevant in a given context unlike regular hyperlinks that land readers on a webpage and ask them spend time and effort to spot the relevant portion. Unfortunately, this service is a bit flaky. When I checked now, it worked. Nevertheless, let me provide another link that is less functionally rich but more robust: http://lnr.li/Q6npt. Worse case, if this also doesn't work, the passage I wanted to reference is the fourth last paragraph in my Finextra blog post Innovative Fintechs Don’t Need No PSD2 Regulation.

Good to know that @ArturoGonzálezMacDowell. I hope the Commission and Parliament scrap the SCA provision altogether. Going by the experience in India, 2FA tends to throw the fraud baby out with the transaction bathwater. Even if the Commission / Parliament permit Merchants to invoke TRA in lieu of SCA, that'd be fine - most merchants know that Mitigating Fraud Does Not Pay The Bills.

On another note, if screen scraping happens without identification, *whose* screen-scraped info is piped into *my* PFM account?