Modernizing Grid Computing: Open Resource Broker (ORB) Contributed to FINOS

Written by FINOS Team | 4/20/26 6:07 AM

Open Resource Broker (ORB) has officially joined the FINOS ecosystem. Contributed jointly by Morgan Stanley and Amazon Web Services (AWS) under the Apache 2.0 license, ORB represents a significant step forward in making compute capacity management more portable, automated, and sustainable for the financial services industry.

The Challenge: Fragmented Infrastructure Management

Infrastructure engineers today face a recurring hurdle: inconsistent, provider-specific APIs and the constant need for duplicated integration logic. When managing high-performance computing (HPC) workloads, the friction between legacy on-premises environments and modern cloud resources often limits an organization's ability to scale efficiently.

The Solution: A Unified Abstraction Layer

ORB was designed to bridge this gap. By providing a unified, open-source API and abstraction layer, ORB extends the IBM Spectrum Symphony HostFactory ecosystem with native integrations for AWS and Kubernetes.

The project provides an interface allowing organizations to dynamically scale workloads using modern orchestration, enabling hybrid cloud bursting, elastic cluster scaling, and cost-optimized resource allocation without rewriting their core infrastructure logic.

Key Features and Capabilities

Cloud-Native Scalability: Seamlessly burst on-premise workloads into AWS or Kubernetes environments.
Cost Optimization: Built-in support for various purchasing options, including Amazon EC2 Spot Instances, helping firms balance high-performance requirements with budget constraints.
Resiliency by Design: Includes proven patterns such as retries and idempotent operations to ensure stability.
Modular Architecture: While the initial release focuses on AWS and Kubernetes, ORB’s design supports CLI, REST, SDK, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) APIs, making it ready for future extensibility across other schedulers and cloud providers.

Get Involved!

Explore the Code: Visit the GitHub Repository to see the source code and latest releases.
Read the Docs: Check out the README for technical deep-dives and setup instructions.
Contribute: Have a bug fix or a new feature? Review the Contributing Guidelines and submit a Pull Request.
Connect with the Team: Reach out to the project maintainers and community at open-resource-broker@lists.finos.org.

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